THOMAS \M QUINCEY 
 
 Essays on Style 
 Rhetoric, and Language 
 
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 Essays on style, rhetoric, and language 
 
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THOMAS BE QUINCE 7 
 
 Essays on Style, 
 Rhetoric, and Language 
 
 EDITED 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 FEED N. SCOTT, Ph.D. 
 
 Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan 
 
 Boston 
 
 ALLYN AND BACON 
 1893 
 
A-^m-^H: 
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 By FRED N. SCOTT. 
 
 Novtooot) TSIxm : 
 
 J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Rhetoric, in spite of the attention which in every age of the 
 world has been earnestly bestowed upon it, is probably to-day the 
 most belated of the sciences. For this the text-books must to 
 some extent be held responsible. They all, good and bad, have a 
 depressing air of fixity and finality. The principles of expression, 
 we are told, were all discovei-ed hundreds of years ago, they are 
 rigid and inalterable, not to say sacred, and the student who lays 
 violent hands upon them is liable to the charge of presumption 
 and want of reverence. Teaching like this, in flat contradiction 
 to the scientific spirit, has done much to check independence of 
 inquiry and restrict the field of research. This state of affairs, 
 however, cannot long endure. There are signs, such as the 
 introduction of the study of literary criticism into the college 
 curriculum, and the investigation of what are properly questions 
 of rhetoric, in the psychological laboratories, which indicate that 
 old prejudices are in process of breaking down and must ulti- 
 mately be swept away. It is to take advantage of this change 
 of front as well as to help bring it about, that the publication of 
 this little series has been undertaken. As soon as the scientific 
 point of view is assumed, the history of contributions to the 
 subject becomes of great importance. In such a history, the 
 two preceding issues, Lewes's ' Principles of Success in Litera- 
 ture ' and Spencer's ' Philosophy of Style,' will surely find a place, 
 and with them must be ranked the essays of De Quincey which 
 
iv Preface. 
 
 make up the present volume. Other of De Quincey's essays, as 
 for example those on ' Greek Tragedy ' and ' Conversation,' and 
 the whole series of papers included under the head 'Literary 
 Criticism ' in the American edition of De Quincey's works, might 
 properly have been included ; but on the whole it seemed better 
 to restrict the selection to those essays which deal directly with 
 the theory of literature, and to throw into an appendix such 
 passages from his other writings as will be of most assistance to 
 the student. 
 
 The materials for the study of De Quincey's life, style, and 
 ideas, now exist in abundance. The definitive edition of his 
 works is that of Masson, in fourteen volumes, with a good index. 
 The essays on 'Style,' 'Rhetoric,' and ' Language ' will be found 
 in Vol. X., that on ' The English Language,' in Vol. XIV. The 
 introduction in Vol. X. deals briefly with De Quincey's theories, 
 and long footnotes on p. 82-87 discuss special points with regard 
 to -his interpretation of Aristotle's 'Rhetoric' The best biog- 
 raphy is that of A. H. Japp (' H. A. Page'), recently reissued in 
 a single volume. Masson has written the volume in the English 
 Men of Letters series, and Leslie Stephen the exhaustive article 
 in the ' Dictionary of English Biography.' A very readable little 
 book is 'Personal Recollections of Thomas De Quiucey,' by J. R. 
 Findlay, who is also author of the article ' De Quincey ' in the last 
 edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' De Quincey's own 
 ' Autobiography ' and ' London Reminiscences,' as well as the 
 more strictly autobiographical passages of the ' Confessions,' 
 should not be overlooked. Much correspondence has recently 
 been edited by Dr. Japp in his ' De Quincey Memorials.' On De 
 Quincey's style and writings, aside from what is to be found in 
 the volumes just cited, may be mentioned Leslie Stephen's article 
 in ' Hours in a Library,' 1st series, p. 349 (reprinted from Fort- 
 nightly 15 : 310), Minto's sketch in his ' Manual of English Prose 
 
Literature,' p. 31-76, Shadworth Hodgson's ' Genius of De 
 Quincey ' in ' Outcast Essays,' p. 1-98, and Masson's essay in 
 his ' Essays, chiefly on English Poets.' Less important articles 
 will be found in Macmillan's 62 : 101 by George Saintsbury 
 (reprinted in 'Essays in English Literature'); Fraser's 62: 781, 
 63: 51, by ' H. W. S. ; ' Atlantic 12: 345, by H. M. Alden; 
 Atlantic 40: 569, by G. P. Lathrop; North American Review 74: 
 425, by S. G. Brown ; North American Review 88 : 113, by G. S. 
 Phillips; Blackwood's 122: 717; British Quarterly 20: 163, 38: 1; 
 Westminster 61 : 519. 
 
 As in the previous issues, the introduction and notes are in- 
 tended to reinforce, not to forestall, the researches of the student. 
 
 FRED N. SCOTT. 
 Ann Arbok, Feb. 18, 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 ESSAY ON STYLE. 
 
 Part I. — Defects of English Style. 
 
 i. Three Failings of the British Character 1 
 
 ii. British Disregard of Style 5 
 
 iii. Educated Women the Depositaries of Good English 10 
 
 iv. Effect of Newspapers on Style 18 
 
 v. English Newspaper Style compared with the Style of the 
 
 French and Germans 25 
 
 vl Style as Organic and as Mechanic 36 
 
 Part II. — Development of Prose. 
 
 i. Origin of Prose 43 
 
 ii. Greek Prose — Herodotus and Thucydides 50 
 
 iii. Greek Prose — The Philosophers 58 
 
 Part III. — -Epochs of Greek Literature. 
 
 i. Outline 70 
 
 ii. Tendency of Intellectual Power to gather in Clusters 70 
 
 iii. The Two Great Periods of Grecian Literature 86 
 
 iv. Isocrates the Connecting Link 93 
 
 v. Greek Literature before Pericles and after Alexander 97 
 
 vii 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 Part IV. — Style and Publication. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i. Features of Greek Literature Favorable to the Development 
 
 of a Theory of Style 102 
 
 ii. Influence of Subjective Pursuits upon the Culture of Style. . 113 
 
 iii. The Idea of Publication 121 
 
 iv. The Theatre and the Forum as Modes of Publication 125 
 
 ESSAY ON RHETORIC. 
 
 i. Popular Conceptions of Rhetoric 138 
 
 ii. Aristotle's View of Rhetoric 140 
 
 iii. Rhetoric Defined 146 
 
 iv. Practical Rhetoric amongst the Greeks 148 
 
 v. The Rhetoric of the Romans 150 
 
 vi. Rhetoric in the Literature of Modern Europe 152 
 
 vii. British Rhetoric 157 
 
 viii. Rhetoric of the Continent 180 
 
 ix. Miscellaneous Criticisms of Whately's ' Rhetoric ' 186 
 
 ESSAY ON LANGUAGE. 
 
 i. Innovations in Language 195 
 
 ii. National Appreciation of Language — the Greeks 198 
 
 iii. The Romans 204 
 
 iv. The French 206 
 
 v. The Germans 209 
 
 vi. The English 211 
 
 ESSAY ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 i. A History of the English Language needed 216 
 
 ii. What constitutes the Value of Language 225 
 
 Appendix 235 
 
 Index 247 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 oX«o 
 
 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 
 
 Thomas De Quincey was born in or near Manchester, 
 August 15, 1785. He was thus ten years the junior of 
 Charles Lamb, ten years the senior of Carlyle, and almost 
 the exact contemporary of his friend John Wilson, who was 
 born but three months before, and had been in his grave but 
 five years when De Quincey died in 1859. The De Quincey 
 stock, supposed to be of Norse extraction, had many 
 branches, of which the American family, represented by 
 the elder Josiah Quincy, had alone arrived at any great 
 distinction. In England, where also the aristocratic de had 
 been dropped from the original name, the family had mostly 
 gone into trade. De Quincey's father was for many years 
 the senior partner of the firm of Quincey and Duck, linen 
 drapers, of Manchester. At the time of the birth of his 
 son, he had become prosperous, gone into the wholesale 
 business, and, owing to poor health, was beginning to spend 
 the greater part of his time abroad. Mrs. Quincey was the 
 daughter of a Westmoreland farmer. Although neither 
 father nor mother rose above the ordinary level in point of 
 intellect, both were people of culture, and the father was 
 author of a single obscure book entitled ' A Short Tour of 
 the Midland Counties of England.' 
 
 De Quincey's early life was spent in a pleasant country- 
 house named Greenhay, situated in the outskirts of Man- 
 chester. The name of Greenhay occurs frequently in the 
 opening chapters of the ' Autobiography.' It was here that 
 the precocious child received, at the age of six, those 
 
x Introduction. 
 
 profound impressions, first, from the death of his sister 
 Elizabeth, and then from the death of his father, which 
 furnished the material for two of his most pathetic passages. 
 It was here also, that he found material for the most success- 
 ful of his humorous sketches, in his pugnacious brother 
 William — William, inventor of methods of skating upon the 
 ceiling, and creator, for purposes of torment, of the degraded 
 kingdom of Gombroon, and the mighty and elastic Empire 
 of Tigrosylvania. While still at Greenhay, and soon after 
 his father's death, De Quincey began the study of Latin and 
 Greek. Having made a fair beginning under a dull but 
 conscientious tutor, he was sent to the Bath Grammar 
 School, where his precocity excited some attention, and 
 then to the Winkfield School in Wiltshire. A few months' 
 vacation in Ireland, in 1800, in company with a young Irish 
 friend, Lord Westport, gave him a taste of the world and 
 social life, and made the Manchester Grammar School, to 
 which he was now sent, seem like a scholastic prison. The 
 tasks of the school-room were, as he has recorded in his 
 ' Confessions of an Opium-Eater,' far below his capabilities. 
 At thirteen he had mastered Greek, writing it with careless 
 ease. At fifteen, when he entered the Manchester School, 
 his command of the language, he tells us, was so great, that 
 he not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but by 
 extemporaneous translation from the newspapers, had ac- 
 quired the ability to converse in Greek fluently and without 
 embarrassment. " That boy," said his teacher to a stranger, 
 "could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I 
 could address an English one." A year and a half under 
 dull though kind-hearted masters, drove the young Grecian 
 to despair. He appealed to his mother and his guardians 
 to be allowed to go to Oxford, and, upon being refused, ran 
 away from school, and returned to his mother's house in 
 Chester. It was part of his plan to visit on his way his 
 favorite poet, Wordsworth, but he had not the courage to do 
 
Life and Writings. xi 
 
 so. Arrived at home, his part was taken by a good-natured 
 uncle, who persuaded the boy's guardians to grant their 
 ward a guinea a week, and his freedom. Then followed the 
 adventures which make up the first part of the ' Confes- 
 sions.' From July to November, 1802, De Quincey tramped 
 about the North of Wales. As long as the weather would 
 permit, he lived in the open air, sleeping at night in a small 
 tent which he carried about with him. Of the many 
 incidents of his outing, the most important was his meeting 
 with one De Haren, of whom we know nothing, save that 
 having a trunkful of German books, he introduced De 
 Quincey to the German language and read with him a good 
 deal of German literature. During this time De Quincey 
 was in constant fear lest his guardians should send him 
 back to the Grammar School. The idea was so hateful to 
 him, that he resolved finally to bury himself in the soli- 
 tude of London, until, having attained his majority, he 
 should be free to pursue his studies where he chose. With 
 a little money, borrowed from some acquaintances, he 
 undertook to carry out this foolish plan. He went to 
 London, and there began a mode of life which resembled 
 that of a hunted animal. A delicately organized, highly 
 educated young man of seventeen, he attached himself, 
 much as a lost dog would do, to a disreputable lawyer of 
 the name of Brunell. He ate chance fragments from his 
 patron's table, and by night slept in the lawyer's great, 
 empty, rat-haunted house. During the day he walked the 
 street, or sat on the benches in the parks. This Bohemian 
 life endured for some months before he was by accident 
 discovered by his friends, and persuaded to return home. 
 
 His guardians now giving their consent to his attending 
 the University, in 1805 he went to Oxford. His life while 
 there, however, was so little less secluded than it had been 
 in London that he afterward declared he owed nothing to 
 the University. If he owed anything it was his acquaint- 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 ance with a German named Schwartzburg, with whom he 
 studied Hebrew and read German philosophy. When he 
 came up for his examinations his paper aroused great ex- 
 pectations among his examiners; but, with characteristic 
 timidity, for some slight reason he failed to appear at the 
 oral examination, and in consequence did not obtain his 
 degree. <% 
 
 Although it was many years before De Quincey called 
 public attention to himself, he began even while yet a resi- 
 dent at Oxford, to form the acquaintance of eminent men 
 of letters. With Wordsworth he had opened correspond- 
 ence as early as 1803. During a visit to London he called 
 upon Charles Lamb. In 1805, conceiving a violent admira- 
 tion for Coleridge, who was then in Malta, De Quincey was 
 for starting at once for that island merely to get a glimpse 
 of the poet. This impulse was not followed, but two years 
 later he met Coleridge at Bridgewater and shortly after had 
 the extreme felicity, while escorting Mrs. Coleridge from 
 Bristol to Southey's home at the Lakes, of staying two 
 days at Grasmere with Wordsworth, Mrs. Wordsworth, and 
 Dorothy. A second and longer visit made in the following 
 year, led to De Quincey's writing an appendix of notes to 
 Wordsworth's pamphlet ' The Convention of Cintra.' This 
 appendix, if we except a translation of Horace made at 
 fifteen, was De Quincey's first serious appearance in the 
 world of letters. 
 
 Had De Quincey died at any time within the next twelve 
 years, his name would now have but a passing interest as 
 that of an obscure friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 
 During that time he produced but a single article which his 
 editor has regarded as worthy of preservation. 1 In Words- 
 worth's cottage at Grasmere which he had rented upon the 
 poet's removal to Allen Bank, he spent his time in reading 
 
 1 'Danish Origin of the Lake-Country Dialect,' Masson's Ed., Vol. XIII. 
 
Life and Writings. xiii 
 
 German philosophy, principally the works of Kant, and 
 planning books which never got themselves written. At 
 one time he meditated coming to America to bury himself 
 in the forest solitudes and there digest the Kantian philos- 
 ophy. Instead, he married, in 1816, Miss Margaret Simp- 
 son, daughter of a neighboring landholder, and cultivated 
 the acquaintance of distinguished neighbors like John Wil- 
 son, Chas. Lloyd, and the poet Southey. 
 
 It was during this period that the opium habit came upon 
 him. He had begun to take opium as a medicine as early 
 as 1803, using it to relieve a painful stomach disorder 
 which he believed to have been brought on by the priva- 
 tions of his life in London. From 1813, however, he took 
 the drug for its own sake, and took it in large and rapidly 
 increasing quantities, until in 1817-19, to the great distress 
 of his wife and friends, his subjection to its influence was 
 complete. The necessity of providing for his family at 
 length aroused him from his torpor. By a great effort he 
 broke loose from the habit for a time, and looked about him 
 for some kind of literary employment. For a time he 
 did editorial work on the Westmoreland Gazette. He then 
 sought an engagement as contributor to Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine, of which his friend Wilson was the ruling spirit, but 
 for some reason failed to secure it. Negotiations with the 
 newly founded London Magazine had a more fortunate out- 
 come. In that periodical, in September, 1821, appeared 
 the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,' and imme- 
 diately upon its appearance De Quincey's reputation as a 
 new force in English prose literature, was solidly estab- 
 lished. Other papers, always announced as coming from 
 the pen of the 'Opium-Eater,' followed at brief but irregu- 
 lar intervals. In 1826, through Wilson's influence, he 
 became a regular contributor to Blackwood's Magazine. 
 This connection, which brought him frequently to Edin- 
 burgh, at length led him to move to that city with his family. 
 
xiv Introduction. 
 
 Here, or in this neighborhood, the remainder of his life was 
 spent in active literary labor. Besides the steady flow of 
 articles running through Blackwood's and Taifs Magazines, 
 he produced for the seventh edition of the 'Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica,' articles on Goethe, Schiller, Pope, and Shake- 
 speare. He was pre-eminently a writer of articles. But two 
 of his works, ' Klosterheim,' a romance of a gloomy type, 
 published in 1832, and the 'Logic of Political Economy' 
 (1844), appeared as separate volumes. 
 
 De Quincey's wife died in 1840. Three years later, he 
 rented a small cottage at Lasswade, seven miles distant 
 from Edinburgh, and moved into it with his childreu, 
 though retaining a room in the city in which to do his work 
 and store his innumerable papers. The remainder of his 
 life was almost barren of events. A few visits to Glasgow, 
 a journey to Scotland to see his married daughter and his 
 grandchildren, an occasional struggle with his old enemy 
 opium — these were the sole interruptions in the quiet 
 current of his life. During the last ten years he was 
 closely associated with the publisher James Hogg, wrote 
 much for Hogg's Weekly Instructor, and, at his friend's 
 suggestion began, in 1853, a 'Collective Edition 7 of his 
 works. He died at his lodgings in Edinburgh, December 8, 
 1859, in his seventy-fifth year. 
 
 A vivid picture of De Quincey's personal appearance is 
 given by J. R. Eindlay in his ' Personal Recollections ' : " He 
 was a very little man (about five feet three or four inches) • 
 his countenance the most remarkable for its intellectual 
 attractiveness that I have ever seen. His features, though 
 not regular, were aristocratically fine, and an air of deli- 
 cate breeding pervaded the face. His forehead was un- 
 usually high, square, and compact. At first sight his face 
 appeared boyishly fresh and smooth, with a sort of hectic 
 glow upon it, that contrasted remarkably with the evident 
 appearances of age in the grizzled hair and dim-looking 
 
Life and Writings. xv 
 
 eyes. The flush or bloom on the cheeks was, I have no 
 doubt, an effect of his constant use of opium; and the 
 apparent smoothness of the face disappeared upon examina- 
 tion. The best description of his peculiar appearance in 
 this respect, is one given by Sir Walter Scott, in reference 
 to General Platoff, whom Scott met at Paris, and from 
 whom, he tells us, he took his portrait of Mr. Touchwood, 
 in St. Ronan's Well. ' His face, which at the distance of a 
 yard or two seemed hale and smooth, appeared, when closely 
 examined, to be seamed with a million of wrinkles, crossing 
 each other in every direction possible, but as fine as the 
 point of a very fine needle.' " 
 
 De Quincey's personality was a curious and perplexing 
 compound of timidity, unsophistication, humor, gloominess, 
 sociability, temper, gentleness, and prejudice. He was so 
 shy, that, when passing a London cabstand, " he refrained, 
 with nervous solicitude, from any gesture that might war- 
 rant any driver in concluding himself summoned." In 
 money matters his innocence was such, that he once 
 attempted to exchange a fifty-pound note for a handful of 
 shillings. Most of his writings are pervaded by a humorous 
 spirit, but any direct attempt at the humorous generally 
 results in flat failure. It is not too much to say that he 
 had no fund of moral seriousness, nor any views of politics 
 or social matters in which he earnestly believed. His 
 attitude toward most of the important issues of life was 
 intellectual and 'literary.' Books were to him much more 
 real than men and affairs, and it was when he regarded the 
 latter through the medium of the former, as in his obser- 
 vations on the character of the French Revolution in 
 reference to Wordsworth's ' Excursion,' 1 that his vision was 
 keenest and most trustworthy. For two things he will 
 certainly be remembered, and deservedly remembered : first, 
 
 11 On Wordsworth's Poetry.' 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 for his services as a conduit in transferring literary and 
 philosophical ideas from Germany to England ; second, for 
 his addition to our knowledge of the capabilities of English 
 prose. The importance of the first is hard to estimate 
 at the present time, hut probably De Quincey should be 
 ranked with Coleridge, Carlyle, and George Eliot as one of 
 the writers who did most to make German thought, for good 
 or bad, a possession of the English mind. De Quincey did 
 not have the philosophic cast of intellect ; he never suc- 
 ceeded in getting more than a superficial idea of the 
 Kantian philosophy ; but in his time it was something that 
 a man of letters should be able to read Kant at all, and, 
 that he should be able to write about him sympathetically 
 in clear English prose, was, for the future of German ideas 
 in England, an advantage hardly to be overrated. 
 
 De Quincey's contributions to the history of English 
 prose are of two kinds : first, his own good example in 
 writing it, and second, his reasoning and theorizing about 
 it. The virtues of English prose will probably remain a 
 kind of superstition, until its history has been written from 
 a scientific point of view. When that has been done, it 
 may be discovered that there is no such thing as absolutely 
 good style, any more than there is absolutely good painting, 
 or music, or architecture. The things of value are the 
 discoveries and the revelations of ways of making expres- 
 sion more effective. .These form the stages in the perpetual 
 evolution of language. To this evolution, De Quincey 
 made in his practice, substantive additions of no small 
 importance. He discovered capacities of prose, which 
 before his time, had not been known to exist ; or, if they 
 existed in isolation, no one had before woven them together 
 and to weave together, is, in art, to make a new thing. 
 The quality which distinguishes De Quincey as a writer of 
 prose, is his ability to conceive, in language, a constructive 
 whole of a musical order. " The more exquisite passages " 
 
Life and Writings. xvii 
 
 says Leslie Stephen, "are intended to be musical compo- 
 sitions, in which, words have to play the part of notes." 
 He seems to have composed in much the same way as did 
 Mozart, who said that pieces gradually got finished in his 
 head, even when they were long, so that he could see the 
 whole of them in a single glance in his mind, as if they 
 were beautiful paintings, or handsome human beings. To 
 De Quincey, music, as he himself said, was a necessity of 
 his daily life. He was passionately fond of Beethoven. 
 His essays abound with references to music, and in the first 
 part of the essay on ' Style ' (p. 4), leading the way to a 
 discussion of the British disregard of style, he speaks of 
 musical feeling in terms which may be applied, with little 
 change, to his own feeling for the harmonies, and sequences, 
 and organic structure of a highly developed prose : " The 
 preparation pregnant with the future ; the remote corre- 
 spondence ; the questions, as it were, which to a deep 
 musical sense, are asked in one passage, and answered in 
 another ; the iteration and ingemination of a given effect, 
 moving through subtle variations, that sometimes disguise 
 the theme, sometimes fitfully reveal it, sometimes throw it 
 out tumultuously to the blaze of daylight." These are 
 qualities which we expect to find in poetical compositions ; 
 they were not common in prose before De Quincey's time. 
 "Humbler writers," says Mr. Stephen, "are content if 
 they can get through a single phrase without producing a 
 decided jar. They aim at keeping up a steady jog-trot, 
 which shall not give actual pain to the jaws of the reader. 
 They no more think of weaving whole paragraphs or chap- 
 ters into complex harmonies, than an ordinary pedestrian of 
 'going to church in a galliard and coming home in a 
 coranto.' Even our great writers generally settle down 
 to a stately, but monotonous gait, after the fashion of 
 Johnson or Gibbon, or, are content with adopting a style as 
 transparent and inconspicuous as possible." 
 
xviii Introduction. 
 
 THE 'ESSAY ON STYLE.' 
 
 Had De Quincey's scientific faculty equalled his powers 
 of construction, he might have produced a treatise on style 
 as important for the history of criticism as Aristotle's 
 ' Rhetoric ' or ' Poetics.' But his learning and his methods 
 of investigation were in no sense scientific. His knowledge 
 was made up of a vast number of bits of information, and 
 of quotations from ancient and modern literature, which 
 had remained with him from the 'prodigious circuit of 
 reading' of which he was so proud. He was incapable of 
 long-sustained processes of exact observation and compari- 
 son. The slightest suggestion sufficed to set him off upon a 
 long digression. The results of such a mind applied to the 
 complex problems of style was naturally not a well-digested 
 system of criticism but a series of brilliant intuitions and 
 suggestions, mingled with irrelevant remarks upon anything 
 that at the time happened to come into his head. Saying 
 so much, it was impossible that he should not now and then 
 say something very good indeed, though, like his penetrat- 
 ing criticism upon Burke (p. 185), it often came as an 
 afterthought and was thrown into the form of a footnote. 
 The ' Essay on Style ' was published in Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine in 1840-41, in four papers corresponding to the four 
 parts of the present edition. Like the other essays of this 
 volume, it completes but a part of the originally projected 
 plan. As usual, De Quincey, starting in without any well- 
 defined conception of his subject-matter, allows his ideas to 
 shape themselves as he goes along. Thus what should 
 have formed the basis of this essay is not touched upon 
 until the closing section. It is not until p. 121 that De 
 Quincey asks the question : " Did the reader ever happen to 
 reflect on the great idea of publication?" A great idea 
 indeed ! — certainly the greatest that De Quincey ever enter- 
 
Essay on '■Rhetoric.'' xix 
 
 tained, and probably one of the greatest of the century. But 
 De Quincey has no idea of making any scientific use of it. 
 That this social conception of literature (for it amounts to 
 that) might be made the basis of a systematic theory of 
 criticism, does not occur to him. Having announced it as a 
 great idea, he proceeds to play about it in a fanciful way, 
 then uses it to enforce the duty "annually growing in 
 solemnity " of cultivating an unwordy diction, and finally 
 explains by it, in a somewhat loose way, the predominance 
 of dramatic and oratorical composition in Athens and the 
 consequent neglect, among the Greeks, of style as a didactic 
 theory. Style, in the modern sense, he does at times in a 
 way connect with the idea of publication, as when he calls 
 it a tool for the popularization of truth (p. 213). Style 
 (p. 104) is the art of constructing sentences and weaving 
 them into coherent wholes. Regarded in itself it has an 
 absolute value and is able to yield a separate intellectual 
 pleasure quite apart from the interest of the subject treated 
 (p. 212). Regarded as subsidiary to the thought, it has 
 two functions, first to render the subject intelligible, second 
 to render it impressive. There is a third conception which 
 makes style the 'incarnation' (the term is Wordsworth's) 
 of the thought (p. 214), but whether this is true of style 
 generally or only of certain specimens, De Quincey does 
 not make entirely clear. 
 
 ESSAY ON 'RHETORIC 
 
 The essay on Rhetoric appeared in Blackwood's Magazine 
 for 1829. The conception of rhetoric which De Quincey 
 wishes to establish is the art of "aggrandizing and bringing 
 out into strong relief, by means of various and striking 
 thoughts some aspect of truth which of itself is supported 
 by no spontaneous feelings, and therefore rests upon arti- 
 ficial aids." Canning serves as an example of the ideal 
 
xx Introduction. 
 
 rhetorician. "His station was with the lilies of the field 
 which toil not neither do they spin. He should have 
 thrown himself upon the admiring sympathies of the work 
 as the most dazzling of rhetorical artists, rather than have 
 challenged their angry passions in a vulgar scuffle foi 
 power." Here we have again the idea of a separate intel 
 lectual pleasure which has just been mentioned. "The 
 artifice and machinery of rhetoric furnishes in its degree as 
 legitimate a basis for intellectual pleasure as any other ' 
 (p. 157). This difficult and dangerous position De Quincej 
 maintains with airy grace. To enlist the services of Aris 
 totle on his side, he revives a theory first proposed by the 
 Italian philologist Eacciolati, that the Aristotelian enthy 
 meme is not a truncated syllogism but an argument fron 
 probability on a question which admits of no positive deci- 
 sion pro or con. Aristotle is in this way made to sanction s 
 rhetorical process in which serious interests play no part. 
 Whether De Quincey meant this essay to be anything more 
 than a brilliant example of the kind of rhetoric he was de- 
 scribing, is not easy to decide. The best parts of it are 
 those in which he lets go of his thesis for a moment, and 
 attacks more vital questions. Thus in the footnote on p, 
 185, he expounds, in contrasting Johnson and Burke, the 
 important principle of growth. "Every truth, be it what il 
 may, every thesis of a sentence, grows in the very fact oi 
 unfolding it. . . . Hence while a writer of Dr. Johnson's 
 class seems only to look back upon his thoughts, Burke 
 looks forward, and does in fact advance and change his own 
 station concurrently with the advance of the sentences.' 1 
 This is of more worth than all the rest of the essay taken 
 together. 
 
The Essays on ' Language.' 
 
 THE ESSAYS OX 'LANGUAGE.' 
 
 Of the two essays on language which are included in this 
 volume, the first appeared in Hogg's Weekly Instructor in 
 1851,. the second, on ' The English Language,' in Blackwood's 
 Magazine in 1839. De Quincey again stumbles upon two 
 ideas of fundamental importance. The first is, that changes 
 in language are responsive to the wants of society. The 
 second is, that languages should be studied comparatively. 
 Carefully worked out, the first principle would carry us far 
 on the way to the establishment of a norm of good usage. 
 The development of language would be exhibited as an 
 expression of a developing social organism. But of this 
 De Quincey gives us a mere suggestion (pp. 195-7) and then 
 turns aside from it as ' too systematic ' for his purpose. 
 
 De Quincey's treatment of the second idea, that of the 
 comparative study of languages, is a fine illustration of the 
 difference between the scientist and the litterateur. He 
 had laid hands, if he had only known it, upon the principle 
 which was destined to guide philological research up to the 
 present time. Bopp's Vergleichende Ghxtmmatik had begun 
 to appear in 1833, six years before the writing of the essay 
 on the 'English Language'; it was completed in 1852, the 
 year after the publication of the essay on ' Language.' But 
 in all that time, while the foundations of the comparative 
 method were being laid, in spite of his boasted familiarity 
 with German thought, De Quincey seems never even to have 
 heard of the eminent philologist. In the first essay, gallop- 
 ing along over the country which the worthy Germans are 
 traversing painfully on foot, he glances this way and that 
 and points out the striking features of the landscape ; in the 
 second essay when the Germans with immense toil have 
 completed the preliminary survey, he comes galloping back 
 again, seeing much the same things and talking about them 
 
xxii Introduction. 
 
 in much the same way. Here as everywhere, however, De 
 Quincey if not exact is always suggestive and always read- 
 able. He raises innumerable questions which he does not 
 pretend to answer. He answers many others in a way 
 which tends to stir up inquiry. If he cannot supply trust- 
 worthy ideas, ready-made, he can do something almost as 
 valuable, — he can incite the student to a search for such 
 ideas in some other source. 
 
 [It seems well to bring together at this point, in chronological order, 
 all of De Quincey's writings. The summary found on pp. 375-382 of 
 Masson's edition has supplied most, though not all of the material. 
 
 The publication in which each article appeared is indicated by the 
 following abbreviations : L.= London Magazine, B.= Blackwood, K.= 
 Knight's Quarterly, T.= Tait's Magazine, N.= North British Review, 
 H. = Sogg , s Weekly Instructor. 
 
 1821: (L.) 'Richter,' ' Analects from Richter.' 1823: (L.) 'Letters 
 to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected,' ' Anecdotage,' 
 ' Herder,' ' Notes from the Pocket-Book of a late Opium-Eater,' ' Mr. 
 Schnackenberger,' 'The Dice,' ' Walking Stewart,' ' On the Knocking 
 at the Gate in Macbeth,' ' Malthus on Population,' ' Kant's Idea of a 
 Universal History,' 'On Suicide,' 'The King of Hayti,' 'Letter on 
 Malthus in reply to Hazlitt,' ' Malthus on the Measure of Value,' 
 ' Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations,' 'The Fatal Marks- 
 man.' 1824 : (L.) ' Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the 
 Rosicrucians and the Freemasons,' 'Analects from Richter, contin- 
 ued,' ' Notes from the Pocket-Book of a Late Opium-Eater, continued,' 
 'Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy,' 'Education of 
 Boys in Large Numbers,' 'Kant on National Character' (Trans.), 
 ' Kant's Abstract of Swedenborgianism,' ' Goethe as reflected in his 
 Novel of Wilhem Meister,' 'Falsification of English History,' ' Wal- 
 ladmor, Sir Walter Scott's German Novel' ; .(K.) ' The Incognito ' 
 (Trans.). 1826-7 : (B.) ' Lessing, with a Translation from his Lao- 
 coon,' 'The Last Days of Immanuel Kant,' 'On Murder considered 
 as One of the Fine Arts' (1st Paper). 1828: (B.) 'Toilette of the 
 Hebrew Lady,' 'Rhetoric.' 1829 (Edinb. Lit. Gazette) : 'Professor 
 Wilson' (1st Paper). 1830: (B.) 'Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays,' 
 'Richard Bentley.' 1831: (B.) ' SamuelParr.' 1832: (B.) 'Charle- 
 magne,' 'The Caesars, Introduction ' ; (separate volume) ' Klosterheim.' 
 
The Essays on 'Language.' xxiii 
 
 1833 : (B.) ' The Csesars, continued,' (B.) ' Revolution of Greece and 
 Supplement on the Suliotes ' ; (T.) 'Kant on the Age of the Earth,' (T.) 
 ' Recollections of Hannah More.' 1834: (T.) 'Sketches of Men and 
 Manners from the Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater,' ' Cole- 
 ridge ' (Papers I.-HI. ) . 1835 : (T. ) ' Coleridge ' (Paper IV. ) , ' Auto- 
 biographic Sketches, continued, Oxford. ' 1836 : (T.) ' Autobiographic 
 Sketches, continued, ' ' German Studies and Kant in Particular. ' 1837 : 
 (T.) ' A Manchester Swedenborgian and a Liverpool Literary Coterie,' 
 (T.) 'Sir Humphrey Davy, Mr. Godwin, Mrs. Grant of Laggan,' (B.) 
 'Revolt of the Tartars' ('Encycl. Brit.'), 'Goethe,' 'Pope'; (Pub. in 
 1863,) ' Pol. Parties of Modern England.' 1838 : (B.) ' The Household 
 Wreck,' (T.) 'Recollections of Charles Lamb,' (T.) 'My Brother 
 Pink,' (B.) 'The Avenger,' (T.) 'Walladmor, A Pseudo-Waverly 
 Novel,' (T.) 'A Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its Eore- 
 most Pretensions' (Paper I.) ; ('Encycl. Brit.') 'Schiller,' 'Shake- 
 speare'; ('Dist. Men of Modern Times,') 'Milton.' 1839: (T.) ' Wil- 
 liam Wordsworth and Coleridge ' (T.) 'Wordsworth and Southey,' (T.) 
 ' Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge,' (T.) 'A Brief Appraisal of 
 Greek Literature ' (Paper II.), (T.) 'The Saracen's Head,' (T.) 'Early 
 Memorials of Grasmere,' (B.) 'The English Language, ' (B.) 'Mira- 
 cles as Subjects of Testimony,' 'Casuistry,' (Pt. I.), (B.) ' On Mur- 
 der considered as one of the Fine Arts ' (2d Paper), (B.) ' Philosophy 
 of Roman History,' (B.) 'Casuistry of Roman Meals,' (B.) 'On 
 Milton.' 1840 : (T.) ' Westmoreland and the Dalesmen, Society of 
 the Lakes,' (T.) 'Society of the Lakes, Chas. Lloyd,' (T.) 'Society 
 of the Lakes, Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, etc.,' (T.) ' Society of the Lakes, 
 Professor Wilson, etc.,' (T.) ' Rambles from the Lakes, Mrs. Siddons 
 and Mrs. Hannah More,' (T.) ' Walking Stewart' (a second article), 
 (T.) 'Edward Irving,' (T.) 'Talfourd, The London Magazine, etc.,' 
 (T.) 'Gradual Estrangement from Wordsworth,' (B.) ' The Essenes,' 
 (B.) 'Theory of Greek Tragedy,' (B.) 'Casuistry' (Pt. II.), (B.) 
 'Modern Superstition,' (B.) 'The Opium Question with China in 
 1840,' 'Style' (Pts. I.-HI). 1841: (T.) 'Story of a Libel, with 
 Thoughts on Duelling,' (B.) 'Style' (Pt. IV.), (B.) 'Plato's Repub- 
 lic,' ' Homer and the Homeridse.' 1842: (B.) ' Philosophy of Herod- 
 otus,' 'Pagan Oracles,' 'Cicero,' 'Modern Greece,' 'Ricardo and 
 Adam Smith,' 'Ricardo made Easy.' 1843: (B.) ' Ceylon.' 1844: 
 (B.) ' Secession from the Church of Scotland,' ' Greece under the 
 Romans'; (separate volume,) 'Logic of Political Economy.' 1845: 
 (B.) 'Coleridge and Opium-Eating,' (B.) 'Suspiria de Profundis,' (T.) 
 ' On Wordsworth's Poetry,' (T.) ' Notes on Gilnllan's Gallery of Lit. 
 
xxiv Introduction. 
 
 Portraits' (I. -III.), (T.) 'National Temperance Movements.' 1846: 
 (T.) ' Notes on Gilflllan's Gallery ' (IV.-V.), ' The Antigone of Sopho- 
 cles,' 'The Marquess Wellesley,' 'On Christianity as an Organ of 
 Political Movement,' ' Glance at the Works of Mackintosh,' ' System 
 of the Heavens, as revealed by Lord Rosse's Telescopes.' 1847 : (T.) 
 'Notes on Walter Savage Landor,' 'Orthographic Mutineers,' ' Milton 
 versus Southey and Landor,' 'Joan of Arc,' 'The Spanish Military 
 Nun,' 'Secret Societies,' ' Schlosser's Literary History of the 18th 
 Century,' 'Conversation,' 'Protestantism' (I. -II.); (Pub. in Masson's 
 ed.) 'Religious Objections to the use of Chloroform.' 1848: (T.) 
 ' Protestantism ' (III.), (N.) ' Oliver Goldsmith,' (N.) ' The Poetry of 
 Pope,' (N.) ' Chas. Lamb'; (Glasgow Athen»um) 'Sortilege and As- 
 trology.' 1849: (B.) 'The English Mail Coach.' 1850 : (H.) ' Con- 
 versation' (a second article), 'The Theban Sphinx,' 'Professor 
 Wilson' (a second paper), 'French and English Manners,' ' Presence 
 of Mind,' 'Logic'; (Pub. in 1871) 'Memorial Chronology.' 1851: 
 (T.) 'Lord Carlisle on Pope,' (H.) 'Language,' (H.) 'A Sketch of 
 Childhood' (Pt. I.), (H.) 'Sir Wm. Hamilton,' (H.) 'California,' 
 (H.) 'A Sketch from Childhood' (Pt. II.). 1853: (H.) ' Judas Is- 
 cariot,' ' Dryden's Hexastich on Milton,' ' The Gold-Digging Mania,' 
 ' On the Supposed Scriptural Expression for Eternity.' 1854: (H.) 
 ' How to Write English ' (fragment). 1857 : (Titan) ' Suetonius Un- 
 ravelled.' 1858: (Titan) 'China.' 
 
 To these should be added the brief articles in the main undated, 
 which are being published in Dr. Japp's ' Posthumous Works of De 
 Quincey.' Among them are the ' Brevia ' from which extract is made 
 in the appendix to this volume. ] 
 
STYLE. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 DEFECTS OF ENGLISH STYLE. 
 
 i. TJiree Failings of the British Character. 
 
 1. Amongst the never-ending arguments for thankfulness 
 iu the privilege of a British birth — arguments more solemn 
 even than numerous, and telling more when weighed than 
 when counted, pondere quam numero — three aspects there 
 are of our national character which trouble the uniformity 
 of our feelings. A good son, even in such a case, is not at 
 liberty to describe himself as " ashamed." Some gentler 
 word must be found to express the character of his distress. 
 And, whatever grounds of blame may appear against his 
 venerated mother, it is one of his filial duties to suppose 
 either that the blame applies but partially, or, if it should 
 seem painfully universal, that it is one of those excesses to 
 which energetic natures are liable through the very strength 
 of their constitutional characteristics. Such things do hap- 
 pen. It is certain, for instance, that to the deep sincerity 
 of British nature, and to that shyness or principle of reserve 
 which is inseparable from self-respect, must be traced philo- 
 sophically the churlishness and unsocial bearing for which, 
 at one time, we were so angrily arraigned by the smooth 
 south of Europe. That facile obsequiousness which attracts 
 the inconsiderate in Belgians, Frenchmen, and Italians, is 
 
 1 
 
2 Style. 
 
 too generally a mixed product from impudence and insin- 
 cerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility 
 compose the original fundus of southern manners ; and the 
 natural product, in a specious hollowness of demeanour, has 
 been afterwards propagated by imitation through innumer- 
 able people who may have partaken less deeply, or not at 
 all, in the original moral qualities that have moulded such 
 a manner. 
 
 2. Great faults, therefore — such is my inference — may 
 grow out of great virtues in excess. And this consideration 
 should make us cautious even towards an enemy ; much 
 more when approaching so holy a question as the merits of 
 our maternal land. Else, and supposing that a strange 
 nation had been concerned in our judgment, we should 
 declare ourselves mortified and humiliated by three expres- 
 sions of the British character, too public to have escaped 
 the notice of Europe. Eirst, we writhe with shame when 
 we hear of semi- delirious lords and ladies, sometimes the- 
 atrically costumed in caftans and turbans — Lord Byrons, 
 for instance, and Lady Hester Stanhopes — proclaiming to 
 the whole world, as the law of their households, that all 
 nations and languages are free to enter their gates, with 
 one sole exception directed against their British compatri- 
 ots ; that is to say, abjuring by sound of trumpet the very 
 land through which only they themselves have risen into 
 consideration; spurning those for countrymen "without 
 whom " (as M. Gourville had the boldness to tell Charles 
 II) — " without whom, by G— , sir, you yourself are noth- 
 ing." We all know who they are that have done this thing : 
 we may know, if we inquire, how many conceited coxcombs 
 are at this moment acting upon that precedent ; in which 
 we scruple not to avow, are contained funds for everlasting 
 satire more crying than any which Juvenal found in the 
 worst days of Rome. And we may ask calmly, Would not 
 death, judicial death, have visited such an act amongst the 
 
Defects of English Style. 3 
 
 ancient republics ? Next, but with, tbat indulgence which 
 belongs to an infirmity rather than an error of the will, we 
 feel ashamed for the obstinate obtuseness of our country 
 in regard to one and the most effective of the Fine Arts. 
 It will be understood that we speak of Music. In Painting 
 and in Sculpture it is now past disputing that, if we are 
 destined to inferiority at all, it is an inferiority only to the 
 Italians of the fifteenth century — an inferiority which, if 
 it were even sure to be permanent, we share with all the 
 other malicious nations around us. On that head we are 
 safe. And in the most majestic of the Pine Arts, — in 
 Poetry, — we have a clear and vast pre-eminence as regards 
 all nations. No nation but ourselves has equally succeeded 
 in both forms of the higher poetry, epic and tragic ; whilst 
 of meditative or philosophic poetry (Young's, Cowper's, 
 Wordsworth's) — to say nothing of lyric — we may affirm 
 what Quintilian says justly of Roman satire : " tota quidem 
 nostra est." 1 If, therefore, in every mode of composition 
 through which the impassioned mind speaks a nation has 
 excelled its rivals, we cannot be allowed to suppose any 
 general defect of sensibility as a cause of obtuseness with 
 regard to music. So little, however, is the grandeur of this 
 divine art suspected amongst us generally that a man will 
 write an essay deliberately for the purpose of putting on 
 record his own preference of a song to the most elaborate 
 music of Mozart : he will glory in his shame, and, though 
 speaking in the character of one seemingly confessing to a 
 weakness, will evidently view himself in the light of a 
 candid man, laying bare a state of feeling which is natural 
 and sound, opposed to a class of false pretenders who, 
 whilst servile to rules of artists, in reality contradict their 
 own musical instincts, and feel little or nothing of what 
 they profess. Strange that even the analogy of other arts 
 should not open his eyes to the delusion he is encouraging ! 
 i ' Institutes,' X. 1, 93. 
 
4 Style. 
 
 A song, an air, a tune, — that is, a short succession of notes 
 revolving rapidly upon itself, — how could that, by possi- 
 bility, offer a field of compass sufficient for the development 
 of great musical effects? The preparation pregnant with 
 the future ; the remote correspondence ; the questions, as 
 it were, which to a deep musical sense are asked in one 
 passage and answered in another ; the iteration and ingemi- 
 nation of a given effect, moving through subtle variations 
 that sometimes disguise the theme, sometimes fitfully reveal 
 it, sometimes throw it out tumultuously to the blaze of 
 daylight -, 1 these and ten thousand forms of self-conflicting 
 musical passion, — what room could they find, what open- 
 ing, what utterance, in so limited a field as an air or song ? 
 A hunting-box, a park-lodge, may have a forest grace and 
 the beauty of appropriateness ; but what if a man should 
 match such a bauble against the Pantheon, or against the 
 minsters of York and Cologne ? A repartee may by acci- 
 dent be practically effective : it has been known to crush a 
 party scheme, and an oration of Cicero's or of Burke's could 
 have done no more ; but what judgment would match the 
 two against each other as developments of power ? Let 
 him who finds the maximum of his musical gratification in 
 a song be assured, by that one fact, that his sensibility is 
 rude and undeveloped. Yet exactly upon this level is the 
 ordinary state of musical feeling throughout Great Britain ; 
 and the howling wilderness of the psalmody in most parish 
 churches of the land countersigns the statement. There 
 is, however, accumulated in London more musical science 
 than in any capital of the world. This, gradually diffused, 
 will improve the feeling of the country. And, if it should 
 fail to do so, in the worst case we have the satisfaction of 
 knowing, through Jean Jacques Rousseau, 2 and by later 
 
 1 All of this, mutatis mutandis, may be applied to literature as well. 
 
 2 " Je conclus que les Francois n'ont point de musique et n'en peuvent 
 avoir." — Kousseau,' Lettre sur la musique francoise.' 
 
Defects of English Style. 5 
 
 evidences, that, sink as we may below Italy and Germany 
 in the sensibility to this divine art, we cannot go lower 
 than France. Here, however, and in this cherished obtuse- 
 ness as regards a pleasure so important for human life and 
 at the head of the physico-intellectual pleasures, we find a 
 second reason for quarrelling with the civilisation of our 
 country. At the summit of civilisation in other points, she 
 is here yet uncultivated and savage. 
 
 3. A third point is larger. Here (properly speaking) our 
 quarrel is co-extensive with that general principle in Eng- 
 land which tends in all things to set the matter above the 
 manner, the substance above the external show, — a princi- 
 ple noble in itself, but inevitably wrong wherever the manuer 
 blends inseparably with the substance. 
 
 ii. British Disregard of Style. 
 
 4. This general tendency operates in many ways : but our 
 own immediate purpose is concerned with it only so far as 
 it operates upon Style. In no country upon earth, were it 
 possible to carry such a maxim into practical effect, is it a 
 more determinate tendency of the national mind to value 
 the matter of a book not only as paramount to the manner, 
 but even as distinct from it, and as capable of a separate 
 insulation. What first gave a shock to such a tendency must 
 have been the unwilling and mysterious sense that in some 
 cases the matter and the manner were so inextricably inter- 
 woven as not to admit of this coarse bisection. The one was 
 embedded, entangled, and interfused through the other, in a 
 way which bade defiance to such gross mechanical separa- 
 tions. But the tendency to view the two elements as in a 
 separate relation still predominates, and, as a consequence, 
 the tendency to undervalue the accomplishment of style. 1 
 
 1 Cf. the closing paragraphs of the essay on ' Language.' 
 
6 Style. 
 
 Do we mean that the English, as a literary nation, are prac- 
 tically less sensible of the effects of a beautiful style ? Not 
 at all. Nobody can be insensible to these effects. And, 
 upon a known fact of history, — viz. the exclusive cultivation 
 of popular oratory in England throughout the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, — we might presume a peculiar 
 and exalted sense of style amongst ourselves. Until the 
 French Eevolution no nation of Christendom except Eng- 
 land had any practical experience of popular rhetoric : any 
 deliberative eloquence, for instance ; any forensic eloquence 
 that was made public; any democratic eloquence of the 
 hustings; or any form whatever of public rhetoric beyond 
 that of the pulpit. Through two centuries at least, no na- 
 tion could have been so constantly reminded of the powers 
 for good and evil which belong to style. Often it must have 
 happened, to the mortification or joy of multitudes, that one 
 man out of windy nothings has constructed an overwhelm- 
 ing appeal to the passions of his hearers, while another has 
 thrown away the weightiest cause by his manner of treating 
 it. Neither let it be said that this might not arise from 
 differences of style, but because the triumphant demagogue 
 made use of fictions, and therefore that his triumph was still 
 obtained by means of his matter, however hollow that mat- 
 ter might have proved upon investigation. That case, also, 
 is a possible case ; but often enough two orators have relied 
 upon the same identical matter — the facts, for instance, 
 of the slave-trade -^and one has turned this to such good 
 account by his arrangements, by his modes of vivifying dry 
 statements, by his arts of illustration, by his science of con- 
 necting things with human feeling, that he has left his 
 hearers in convulsions of passion ; whilst the other shall 
 have used every tittle of the same matter without eliciting 
 one scintillation of sympathy ./without leaving behind one 
 distinct impression in the memory or planting one murmur 
 in the heart. 
 
Defects of English Style. ' 
 
 5. In proportion, therefore, as the English people have 
 been placed for two centuries and a quarter {i.e. since the 
 latter decennium of James the First's reign) under a constant 
 experience of popular eloquence thrown into all channels of 
 social life, they must have had peculiar occasion to feel the 
 effects of style. But to feel is not to feel consciously. Many 
 a man is charmed by one cause who ascribes the effect to 
 another. Many a man is fascinated by the artifices of com- 
 position who fancies that it is the subject which has operated 
 so potently. And even for the subtlest of philosophers who 
 keeps in mind the interpenetration of the style and the mat- 
 ter it would be as difficult to distribute the true proportions 
 of their joint action as, with regard to the earliest rays of 
 the dawn, it would be to say how much of the beauty lay in 
 the heavenly light which chased away the darkness, how 
 much in the rosy colour which that light entangled. 
 
 6. Easily, therefore, it may have happened that, under 
 the constant action and practical effects of style, a nation 
 may have failed to notice the cause as the cause. And, 
 besides the disturbing forces which mislead the judgment 
 of the auditor in such a case, there are other disturbing 
 forces which modify the practice of the speaker. That is 
 good rhetoric for the hustings which is bad for a book. 
 Even for the highest forms of popular eloquence the laws 
 of style vary much from the general standard. In the sen- 
 ate, and for the same reason in a newspaper, it is a virtue 
 to reiterate your meaning : tautology becomes a merit : vari- 
 ation of the words, with a substantial identity of the sense 
 and dilution of the truth, is oftentimes a necessity. A man 
 who should content himself with a single condensed enunci- 
 ation of a perplexed doctrine would be a madman and a 
 felo-de-se as respected his reliance upon that doctrine. Like 
 boys who are throwing the sun's rays into the eyes of a mob 
 by means of a mirror, you must shift your lights and vibrate 
 your reflections at every possible angle, if you would agi- 
 
8 Style. 
 
 tate the popular mind extensively. Every mode of intel- 
 lectual communication has its separate strength and separate 
 weakness, — its peculiar embarrassments, compensated by 
 peculiar resources. It is the advantage of a. book that you 
 can return to the past page if anything in the present 
 depends upon it. But, return being impossible in the case 
 of a spoken harangue, where each sentence perishes as it 
 is born, both the speaker and the hearer become aware of 
 a mutual interest in a much looser style, and a perpetual 
 dispensation from the severities of abstract discussion. It 
 is for the benefit of both that the weightier propositions 
 should be detained before the eye a good deal longer than 
 the chastity of taste or the austerity of logic would tolerate 
 in a book. 1 Time must be given for the intellect to eddy 
 about a truth, and to appropriate its bearings. There is a 
 sort of previous lubrication, such as the boa-constrictor 
 applies to any subject of digestion, which is requisite to 
 familiarize the mind with a startling or a complex novelty. 
 And this is obtained for the intellect by varying the modes 
 of presenting it, — now putting it directly before the eye, 
 now obliquely, now in an abstract shape, now in the con- 
 crete ; all which, being the proper technical discipline for 
 dealing with such cases, ought no longer to be viewed as a 
 licentious mode of style, but as the just style in respect of 
 those licentious circumstances. And the true art for such 
 popular display is to contrive the best forms for appearing 
 to say something new when in reality you are but echoing 
 yourself ; to break up massy chords into running variations ; 
 and to mask, by slight differences in the manner, a virtual 
 identity in the substance. 
 
 7. We have been illustrating a twofold neutralizing 
 
 1 " The audience to which Rhetoric addresses itself consists of persons 
 who are unable to comprehend a number of arguments in a single view or 
 to follow out a long chain of reasoning." — Aristotle, 'Rhetoric' I. 2, 
 Welldon's Trans. 
 
Defects of English Style. 9 
 
 effect applied to the advantages otherwise enjoyed by the 
 English people for appreciating the forms of style. What 
 was it that made the populace of Athens and of Eome so 
 sensible to the force of rhetoric and to the magic of lan- 
 guage ? It was the habit of hearing these two great en- 
 gines daily worked for purposes interesting to themselves 
 as citizens, and sufficiently intelligible to command their 
 willing attention. The English amongst modern nations 
 have had the same advantages, allowance being made for 
 the much less intense concentration of the audience. In 
 the ancient republics it was always the same city, and, 
 therefore, the same audience, except in so far as it was 
 spread through many generations. This has been otherwise 
 in England ; and yet, by newspaper reports, any great effect 
 in one assize town, or electoral town, has been propagated 
 to the rest of the empire, through the eighteenth and the 
 present century. But all this, and the continual exemplifi- 
 cation of style as a great agency for democratic effect, have 
 not availed to win a sufficient practical respect in England 
 for the arts of composition as essential to authorship. And 
 the reason is because, in the first place, from the intertext- 
 ure of style and matter, from the impossibility that the one ' 
 should affect them otherwise than in connexion with the other,^ 
 it has been natural for an audience to charge on the supe- 
 rior agent what often belonged to the lower. This in the 
 first place ; and, secondly, because, the modes of style appro- 
 priate to popular eloquence being essentially different from 
 those of written composition, any possible experience on the 
 hustings, or in the senate, would pro tanto tend rather to 
 disqualify the mind for appreciating the more chaste and 
 more elaborate qualities of style fitted for books ; and thus 
 a real advantage of the English in one direction has been 
 neutralized by two causes in another. 
 
 8. Generally and ultimately it is certain that our British 
 disregard or inadequate appreciation of style, though a very 
 
10 Style. 
 
 lamentable fault, has had its origin in the manliness of the 
 British character; in the sincerity and directness of the 
 British taste ; in the principle of " esse quam videri," which 
 might be taken as the key to much in our manner, much in 
 the philosophy of our lives ; and, finally, has had some part 
 of its origin in that same love for the practical and the 
 tangible which has so memorably governed the course of 
 our higher speculations from Bacon to Newton. But, what- 
 ever may have been the origin of this most faulty habit, 
 whatever mixed causes now support it, beyond all question 
 it is that such a habit of disregard or of slight regard 
 applied to all the arts of composition does exist in the most 
 painful extent, and is detected by a practised eye in every 
 page of almost every book that is published. 
 
 iii. Educated Women the Depositaries of Good English. 
 
 9. If you could look anywhere with a right to expect con- 
 tinual illustrations of what is good in the manifold qualities 
 of style, it should reasonably be amongst our professional 
 authors ; but, as a body, they are distinguished by the most 
 absolute carelessness in this respect. Whether in the choice 
 of words and idioms, or in the construction of their sen- 
 tences, it is not possible to conceive the principle of lazy 
 indifference carried to a more revolting extremity. Proof 
 lies before you, spread out upon every page, that no excess 
 of awkwardness, or of inelegance, or of unrhythmical ca- 
 dence, is so rated in the tariff of faults as to balance in the 
 writer's estimate the trouble of remoulding a clause, of 
 interpolating a phrase, or even of striking the pen through 
 a superfluous word. In our own experience it has happened 
 that we have known an author so laudably fastidious in this 
 subtle art as to have recast one chapter of a series no less 
 than seventeen times : so difficult was the ideal or model of 
 excellence which he kept before his mind; so indefatigable 
 
Defects of English Style. 11 
 
 was his labour for mounting to the level of that ideal. 
 Whereas, on the other hand, with regard to a large majority 
 of the writers now carrying forward the literature of the 
 country from the last generation to the next, the evidence 
 is perpetual not so much that they rest satisfied with their 
 own random preconceptions of each clause or sentence as 
 that they never trouble themselves to form any such pre- 
 conceptions. Whatever words tumble out under the blind- 
 est accidents of the moment, those are the words retained; 
 whatever sweep is impressed by chance upon the motion of 
 a period, that is the arrangement ratified. To fancy that 
 men thus determinately careless as to the grosser elements 
 of style would pause to survey distant proportions, or to 
 adjust any more delicate symmetries of good composition, 
 would be visionary. As to the links of connexion, the tran- 
 sitions, and the many other functions of logic in good writ- 
 ing, things are come to such a pass that what was held true 
 of Rome in two separate ages by two great rhetoricians, 
 and of Constantinople in an age long posterior, may now be 
 affirmed of England : the idiom of our language, the mother 
 tongue, survives only amongst our women and children; 
 not, Heaven knows, amongst our women who write books 
 
 — they are often painfully conspicuous for all that disfigures 
 authorship — but amongst well-educated women not profes- 
 sionally given to literature. Cicero and Quintilian, each 
 for his own generation, ascribed something of the same pre- 
 eminence to the noble matrons of Rome; and more than 
 one writer of the Lower Empire has recorded of Byzantium 
 that in the nurseries of that city was found the last home 
 for the purity of the ancient Greek. No doubt it might 
 have been found also amongst the innumerable mob of that 
 haughty metropolis, but stained with corruptions and vul- 
 gar abbreviations; or, wherever it might lurk, assuredly 
 it was not amongst the noble, the officials, or the courtiers, 
 
 — else it was impossible that such a master of affectation 
 
12 Style. 
 
 as Mcetas Choniates, 1 f or instance, should have found toler- 
 ation. But the rationale of this matter lies in a small com- 
 pass : -why are the local names, whenever they have resulted 
 from the general good sense of a country, faithful to the 
 local truth, grave, and unaffected? Simply because they 
 are not inventions of any active faculty, but mere passive 
 depositions from a real impression upon the mind. On the 
 other hand, wherever there is an ambitious principle set in 
 motion for name-inventing, there it is sure to terminate in 
 something monstrous and fanciful. Women offend in such 
 cases even more than men, because more of sentiment or 
 romance will mingle with the names they impose. Sailors 
 again err in an opposite spirit; there is no affectation in 
 their names, but there is too painful an effort after ludi- 
 crous allusions to the gravities of their native land — " Big 
 Wig Island," or "the Bishop and his Clerks" — or the 
 name becomes a memento of real incidents, but too casual 
 and personal to merit this lasting record of a name, such as 
 Point Farewell, or Cape Turn-again. This fault applies to 
 many of the Yankee 2 names, and to many more in the 
 southern and western States of North America, where the 
 earliest population has usually been of a less religious char- 
 acter; and most of all it applies to the names of the back 
 settlements. These people live under influences the most 
 opposite to those of false refinement: coarse necessities, 
 elementary features of peril or embarrassment, primary 
 aspects of savage nature, compose the scenery of their 
 
 1 A Byzantine writer of the twelfth century, who composed a history of 
 Rome covering the years 1118-1206, a short essay on the statues destroyed 
 during the siege of Constantinople, several panegyrics of emperors, and 
 (probably) a theological treatise. His affectation appears most plainly in 
 the Panegyrics. 
 
 2 "Yankee names": — Foreigners in America subject themselves to a 
 perpetual misinterpretation by misapplying this term. "Yankee," in the 
 American use, does not mean a citizen of the United States as opposed to 
 a foreigner, but a citizen of the Northern New England States (Massachu- 
 setts, Connecticut, etc.) opposed to a Virginian, a Kentuckian, etc. — De Q. 
 
Defects of English Style. 13 
 
 thoughts, and these are reflected by their names. Dismal 
 Swamp expresses a condition of unreclaimed nature, which 
 must disappear with growing civilisation. Big Bone Lick 
 tells a tale of cruelty that cannot often be repeated. Buffa- 
 loes, like all cattle, derive medicinal benefit from salt ; they 
 come in droves for a thousand miles to lick the masses of 
 rock salt. The new settlers, observing this, lie in ambush 
 to surprise them : 25,000 noble animals in one instance were 
 massacred for their hides. In the following year the usual 
 crowds advanced, but the first who snuffed the tainted air 
 wheeled round, bellowed, and " recoiled " far into his native 
 woods. Meantime the large bones remain to attest the 
 extent of the merciless massacre. Here, as in all cases, 
 there is a truth expressed, but again too casual and special. 
 Besides that, from contempt of elegance, or from defect of 
 art, the names resemble the seafaring nomenclature in being 
 too rudely compounded. 
 
 10. As with the imposition of names, so with the use of 
 the existing language, most classes stand between the press- 
 ure of two extremes : of coarseness, of carelessness, of im- 
 perfect art, on the one hand; of spurious refinement and 
 fantastic ambition upon the other. Authors have always 
 been a dangerous class for any language. Amongst the 
 myriads who are prompted to authorship by the coarse love 
 of reputation, or by the nobler craving for sympathy, there 
 will always be thousands seeking distinction through novel- 
 ties of diction. Hopeless of any audience through mere 
 weight of matter, they will turn for their last resource to 
 such tricks of innovation as they can bring to bear upon 
 language. What care they for purity or simplicity of dic- 
 tion, if at any cost of either they can win a special attention 
 to themselves ? Now, the great body of women are under 
 no such unhappy bias. If they happen to move in polished 
 circles, or have received a tolerable education, they will 
 speak their native language of necessity with truth and 
 
14 Style. 
 
 simplicity. And, supposing them not to be professional 
 writers (as so small a proportion can be, even in France or 
 England), there is always something in the situation of 
 women which secures a fidelity to the idiom. From the 
 greater excitability of females, and the superior vivacity of 
 their feelings, they will be liable to far more irritations 1 
 from wounded sensibilities. It is for such occasions chiefly 
 that they seek to be effective in their language. Now, there 
 is not in the world so certain a guarantee for pure idiomatic 
 diction, without tricks or affectation, as a case of genuine 
 excitement. Real situations are always pledges of a, real 
 natural language. It is in counterfeit passion, in the mimi- 
 cal situations of novels, or in poems that are efforts of 
 ingenuity and no ebullitions of absolute unsimulated feel- 
 ing, that female writers endeavour to sustain their own 
 jaded sensibility, or to reinforce the languishing interest 
 of their readers by extravagances of language. No woman 
 in this world, under a movement of resentment from a false 
 accusation, or from jealousy, or from confidence betrayed, 
 ever was at leisure to practise vagaries of caprice in the 
 management of her mother tongue : strength of real feeling 
 shuts out all temptation to the affectation of false feeling. 
 
 11. Hence the purity of the female Byzantine Greek. Such 
 caprices as they might have took some other course, and 
 found some other vent than through their mother tongue. 
 Hence, also, the purity of female English. Would you 
 desire at this day to read our noble language in its native 
 beauty, picturesque from idiomatic propriety, racy in its 
 phraseology, delicate yet sinewy in its composition, steal 
 the mail-bags, and break open all the letters in female hand- 
 writing. Three out of four will have been written by that 
 
 1 " The greatness of an author consists in having a mind extremely irri- 
 table, and at the same time steadfastly imperial: — irritable that no stimu- 
 lus may be inoperative, even in its most evanescent solicitations ; imperial, 
 that no solicitation may divert him from his deliberately chosen aims." — 
 Lewes's ' Principles of Success in Literature,' p. 33. 
 
Defects of English Style. 15 
 
 class of women who have the most leisure and the most 
 interest in a correspondence by the post: that class who 
 combine more of intelligence, cultivation, and of thought- 
 fulness, than any other in Europe — the class of unmarried 
 women above twenty -five — an increasing class 1 ; women 
 who, from mere dignity of character, have renounced all 
 prospects of conjugal and parental life, rather than descend 
 into habits unsuitable to their birth. Women capable of 
 such sacrifices, and marked by such strength of mind, may 
 be expected to think with deep feeling, and to express them- 
 selves (unless where they have been too much biassed by 
 bookish connexions) with natural grace. Not impossibly 
 these same women, if required to come forward in some 
 public character, might write ill and affectedly. They would 
 then have their free natural movement of thought distorted 
 into some accommodation to artificial standards, amongst 
 which they might happen to select a bad one for imitation. 
 But in their letters they write under the benefit of their 
 natural advantages ; not warped, on the one hand, into that 
 constraint or awkwardness which is the inevitable effect of 
 conscious exposure to public gaze; yet, on the other, not 
 left to vacancy or the chills of apathy, but sustained by 
 some deep sympathy between themselves and their corre- 
 spondents. 
 
 12. So far as concerns idiomatic English, we are satis- 
 fied, from the many beautiful female letters which we have 
 heard upon chance occasions from every quarter of the 
 empire, that they, the educated women of Great Britain — 
 above all, the interesting class of women unmarried upon 
 scruples of sexual honour — and also (as in Constantinople 
 
 1 "An increasing class ": — But not in France. It is a most remarkable 
 moral phenomenon in the social condition of that nation, and one which 
 speaks a volume as to the lower tone of female dignity, that unmarried 
 women at the age which amongst us obtains the insulting name of old 
 maids are almost unknown. What shocking sacrifices of sexual honour 
 does this one fact argue ! — De Q. 
 
16 Style. 
 
 of old) the nurseries of Great Britain, — are the true and 
 best depositaries of the old mother idiom. But we must 
 not forget that, though this is another term for what is good 
 in English when we are talking of a human and a popular 
 interest, there is a separate use of the language, as in the 
 higher forms of history or philosophy, which ought not to 
 be idiomatic. As respects that which is, it is remarkable 
 that the same orders cling to the ancient purity of diction 
 amongst ourselves who did so in Pagan Rome : viz. women, 
 for the reasons just noticed, and people of rank. So much 
 has this been the tendency in England that we know a per- 
 son of great powers, but who has in all things a one-sided 
 taste, and is so much a lover of idiomatic English as to 
 endure none else, who professes to read no writer since Lord 
 Chesterfield. It is certain that this accomplished noble- 
 man, who has been most unjustly treated from his unfortu- 
 nate collision with a national favourite, and in part also 
 from the laxity of his moral principles, — where, however, 
 he spoke worse than he thought, — wrote with the ease and 
 careless grace of a high-bred gentleman. But his style is 
 not peculiar: it has always been the style of his order. 
 After making the proper allowance for the continual new 
 infusions into our peerage from the bookish class of lawyers, 
 and for some modifications derived from the learned class 
 of spiritual peers, the tone of Lord Chesterfield has always 
 been the tone of our old aristocracy, — a tone of elegance 
 and propriety, above all things free from the stiffness of 
 pedantry or academic rigour, and obeying Caesar's rule of 
 shunning tanquam scopulum any insolens verbum. It is, 
 indeed, through this channel that the solicitudes of our 
 British nobility have always flowed : other qualities might 
 come and go according to the temperament of the individual- 
 but what in all generations constituted an object of horror 
 for that class was bookish precision and professional pecul- 
 iarity. From the free popular form of our great public 
 
Defects of English Style. 17 
 
 schools, to -which nine out of ten amongst our old nobility 
 resorted, it happened unavoidably that they were not equally 
 clear of popular vulgarities ; indeed, from another cause, that 
 could not have been avoided: for it is remarkable that a 
 connexion, as close as through an umbilical cord, has always 
 been maintained between the very highest orders of our aris- 
 tocracy and the lowest of our democracy, by means of nurses. 
 The nurses and immediate personal attendants of all classes 
 come from the same sources, most commonly from the peas- 
 antry of the land; they import into all families alike, into 
 the highest and lowest, the coarsest expressions from the 
 vernacular language of anger and contempt. Whence, for 
 example, it was that about five or six years ago, when a new 
 novel circulated in London, with a private understanding 
 that it was a juvenile effort from two very young ladies, 
 daughters of a ducal house, nobody who reflected at all could 
 feel much surprise that one of the characters should express 
 her self-esteem by the popular phrase that she did not 
 "think small beer of herself." Naturally, papa, the duke, 
 had not so much modified the diction of the two young 
 ladies as Nurse Bridget. Equally in its faults and its 
 merits, the language of high life has always tended to sim- 
 plicity and the vernacular ideal, 1 recoiling from every mode 
 of bookishness. And in this, as in so many other instances, 
 it is singular to note the close resemblance between polished 
 England and polished Rome. Augustus Caesar was so little 
 able to enter into any artificial forms or tortuous obscurities 
 
 1 " Awful whispers come back from the enterprising Americans who 
 have scaled the topmost, innermost defenses of aristocratic fashion, that 
 the English spoken there is something dreadful, — that it must have been 
 learned about the stables and kennels; and examples of its quality are 
 reported in the manner of people divulging things incredible. Among 
 such examples have been mentioned the following as more or less common : 
 gal (girl), rid'n (riding), bilin' (boiling), sett'n (setting), gearding (first 
 g hard — garden) , chaw (chew) , wen (when) , yalleh (yellow) , hoss (horse) , 
 that's him, it's her, — and (Phoebus Apollo !) sometimes, him and me done 
 it." — K. O. Williams, ' Our Dictionaries,' p. 106. 
 
18 Style. 
 
 of ambitious rhetoric that he could not so much as under- 
 stand them. Even the old antique forms of language, 
 where it happened that they had become obsolete, were to 
 him disgusting. Indeed, as regarded the choice and colour- 
 ing of diction, Augustus was much of a blockhead : a truth 
 which we utter boldly, now that none of his thirty legions 
 can get at us. And probably the main bond of connexion 
 between himself and Horace was their common and exces- 
 sive hatred of obscurity; from which quality, indeed, the 
 very intellectual defects of both, equally with their good 
 taste, alienated them to intensity. 
 
 i 
 
 iv. Effect of Newspapers on Style. 
 
 13. The pure racy idiom of colloquial or household Eng- 
 lish, we have insisted, must be looked for in the circles of 
 well-educated women not too closely connected with books. 
 It is certain that books, in any language, will tend to 
 encourage a diction too remote from the style of spoken 
 idiom; whilst the greater solemnity and the more cere- 
 monial costume of regular literature must often demand such 
 a non-idiomatic diction upon mere principles of good taste. 
 But why is it that in our day literature has taken so deter- 
 minate a swing towards this professional language of books 
 as to justify some fears that the other extreme of the free 
 colloquial idiom will perish as a living dialect ? The appar- 
 ent cause lies in a phenomenon of modern life which on 
 other accounts also is entitled to anxious consideration. It 
 is in newspapers that we must look for the main reading of 
 this generation ; and in newspapers, therefore, we must seek 
 for the causes operating upon the style of the age. Seventy 
 years ago this tendency in political journals to usurp upon 
 the practice of books, and to mould the style of writers, was 
 noticed by a most acute observer, himself one of the most 
 brilliant writers in the class of satiric sketchers and per- 
 
Defects of English Style. 19 
 
 sonal historians that any nation has produced. Already 
 before 1770 the late Lord Orford, then simply Horace Wal- 
 pole, was in the habit of saying to any man who consulted 
 him on the cultivation of style, — "Style is it that you 
 want ? Oh, go and look into the newspapers for a style." 
 This was said half contemptuously and half seriously. But 
 the evil has now become overwhelming. One single num- 
 ber of a London morning paper, — which in half a century 
 has expanded from the size of a dinner napkin to that of a 
 breakfast tablecloth, from that to a carpet, and will soon be 
 forced, by the expansions of public business, into something 
 resembling the mainsail of a frigate, — already is equal in 
 printed matter to a very large octavo volume. Every old 
 woman in the nation now reads daily a vast miscellany in 
 one volume royal octavo. The evil of this, as regards the 
 quality of knowledge communicated, admits of no remedy. 
 Public business, in its whole unwieldy compass, must always 
 form the subject of these daily chronicles. Nor is there 
 much room to expect any change in the style. The evil 
 effect of this upon the style of the age may be reduced to 
 two forms. Formerly the ' natural impulse of every man 
 was spontaneously to use the language of life ; the language 
 of books was a secondary attainment, not made without 
 effort. Now, on the contrary, the daily composers of news- 
 papers have so long dealt in the professional idiom of books 
 as to have brought it home to every reader in the nation who 
 does not violently resist it by some domestic advantages. 
 Time was, within our own remembrance, that, if you should 
 have heard, in passing along the street, from any old apple- 
 woman such a phrase as " I will avail myself of your kind- 
 ness, " forthwith you would have shied like a skittish horse ; 
 you would have run away in as much terror as any old 
 Eoman upon those occasions when bos loquebatur. At pres- 
 ent you swallow such marvels as matters of course. The 
 whole artificial dialect of books has come into play as 
 
20 Style. 
 
 the dialect of ordinary life. This js^one form of the evil 
 impressed upon our style by journalism : a dire monotony 
 of bookish idiom has encrusted and stiffened all native free- 
 dom of expression, like some scaly leprosy or elephantiasis, 
 barking and hide-binding the fine natural pulses of the 
 elastic flesh. Another and almost a worse evil has estab- 
 lished itself in the prevailing structure of sentences. Every 
 man who has had any experience in writing knows how 
 natural it is for hurry and fulness of matter to discharge 
 itself by vast sentences, involving clause within clause ad 
 infinitum; how difficult it is, and how much a work of art, 
 to break up this huge fasciculus of cycle and epicyle into a 
 graceful succession of sentences, long intermingled with 
 short, each modifying the other, and arisingmusically by 
 links of spontaneous connexion. Now, theVm ethor ic form 
 of period, this monster model of sentence, bloated with 
 decomplex intercalations, and exactly repeating the form of 
 syntax which distinguishes an act of Parliament, is the pre- 
 vailing model in newspaper eloquence. Crude undigested 
 masses of suggestion, furnishing rather raw materials for 
 composition and jottings for the memory than any formal 
 developments of the ideas, describe the quality of writing 
 which must prevail in journalism : not from defect of tal- 
 ents, — which are at this day of that superior class which 
 may be presumed from the superior importance of the func- 
 tion itself, — but from the necessities of hurry and of 
 instant compliance with an instant emergency, granting no 
 possibility for revision or opening for amended thought, 
 which are evils attached to the flying velocities of public 
 business. 1 
 
 1 In this country, newspapers have exerted two forms of influence which 
 run directly counter to those noted by De Quincey : (1) they have substi- 
 tuted, even in the treatment of the most serious themes, the language of 
 common life- for that of books ; (2) they have cultivated a nervous, staccato 
 style of sentence which has almost driven out of vogue the formal periods 
 of the British ' leader. ' 
 
Defects of English Style. 21 
 
 14. As to structure of sentence and the periodic involu- 
 tion, that scarcely admits of being exemplified in the con- 
 versation of those who do not write. But the choice of 
 phraseology is naturally and easily echoed in the colloquial 
 forms of those who surrender themselves to such an influ- 
 ence. To mark in what degree this contagion of bookish- 
 ness has spread, and how deeply it has moulded the habits 
 of expression in classes naturally the least likely to have 
 been reached by a revolution so artificial in its character, 
 we will report a single record from the memorials of our 
 own experience. Some eight years ago, we had occasion to 
 look for lodgings in a newly-built suburb of London to the 
 south of the Thames. The mistress of the house (with 
 respect to whom we have nothing to report more than that 
 she was in the worst sense a vulgar woman: that is, not 
 merely a low-bred person — so much might have been 
 expected from her occupation — but morally vulgar by the 
 evidence of her own complex precautions against fraud, 
 reasonable enough in so dangerous a capital, but not calling 
 for the very ostentatious display of them which she obtruded 
 upon us) was in regular training, it appeared, as a student 
 of newspapers. She had no children ; the newspapers were 
 her children. There lay her studies ; that branch of learn- 
 ing constituted her occupation from morning to night; and 
 the following were amongst the words which she — this semi- 
 barbarian — poured from her comucopiaauring the very 
 few minutes of our interview ; which interview was brought 
 to an abrupt issue by mere nervous agitation upon our part. 
 The words, as noted down within an hour of the occasion, 
 and after allowing a fair time for our recovery, were these : 
 — first, "category"; secondly, "predicament" (where, by 
 the way, from the twofold iteration of the idea — Greek 
 and Eoman — it appears that the old lady was "twice 
 armed ") ; thirdly, " individuality " ; fourthly, " procrastina- 
 tion " ; fifthly, " speaking diplomatically, would not wish to 
 
22 Style. 
 
 commit herself," — who knew but that "inadvertently she 
 might even compromise both herself and her husband ? 
 sixthly, " would spontaneously adapt the several modes of 
 domestication to the reciprocal interests," &c. ; and, finally 
 — (which word it was that settled us : we heard it as we 
 reached the topmost stair on the second floor, and, without 
 further struggle against our instincts, round we wheeled, 
 rushed down forty-five stairs, and exploded from the house 
 with a fury causing us to impinge against an obese or pro- 
 tuberant gentleman, and calling for mutual explanations : a 
 result which nothing could account for but a steel bow, or 
 mustachios on the lip of an elderly woman : meantime the 
 fatal word was), — seventhly, "anteriorly." Concerning 
 which word we solemnly depose and make affidavit that 
 neither from man, woman, nor book, had we ever heard it 
 before this unique rencontre with this abominable woman on 
 the staircase. The occasion which furnished the excuse for 
 such a word was this : — From the staircase-window we saw 
 a large shed in the rear of the house ; apprehending some 
 nuisance of "manufacturing industry" in our neighbour- 
 hood, — "What's that ?" we demanded. Mark the answer: 
 "A shed; that's what it is; videlicet a shed; and anteriorly 
 to the existing shed there was ; " what there was pos- 
 terity must consent to have wrapt in darkness, for there 
 came on our nervous seizure, which intercepted further 
 communication. But observe, as a point which took away 
 any gleam of consolation from the case, the total absence of 
 all malaprop picturesqueness that might have defeated its 
 deadly action upon the nervous system. No ; it is due to 
 the integrity of her disease, and to the completeness of our 
 suffering, that we should attest the unimpeachable correct- 
 ness of her words, and of the syntax by which she connected 
 them. 
 
 15. Now, if we could suppose the case that the old house- 
 hold idiom of the land were generally so extinguished 
 
Defects of English Style. 23 
 
 amongst us as it was in this particular instance ; if we could 
 imagine, as a universal result of journalism, that a coarse un- 
 lettered woman, having occasion to say " this or that stood in 
 such a place before the present shed," should take as a nat- 
 ural or current formula " anteriorly to the existing shed there 
 stood," &c, what would be the final effect upon our litera- 
 ture ? Pedantry, though it were unconscious pedantry, once 
 steadily diffused through a nation as to the very moulds of 
 its thinking, and the general tendencies of its expression, 
 could not but stiffen the natural graces of composition, and 
 weave fetters about the free movement of human thought. 
 This would interfere as effectually with our power of enjoy- 
 ing much that is excellent in our past literature as it would 
 with our future powers of producing. And such an agency 
 has been too long at work amongst us not to have already 
 accomplished some part of these separate evils. Amongst 
 women of education, as we have argued above, standing 
 aloof from literature, and less uniformly drawing their 
 intellectual sustenance from newspapers, the deadening 
 effects have been partially counteracted. Here and there, 
 amongst individuals alive to the particular evils of the age, 
 and watching the very set of the current, there may have 
 been even a more systematic counteraction applied to the 
 mischief. But the great evil in such cases is this, that we 
 cannot see the extent of the changes wrought or being 
 wrought, from having ourselves partaken in them. Tem- 
 pora mutantur; and naturally, if we could review them with 
 the neutral eye of a stranger, it would be impossible for us 
 not to see the extent of those changes. But our eye is not 
 neutral ; we also have partaken in the changes ; nos et muta- 
 mur in illis. And this fact disturbs the power of appreciat- 
 ing those changes. Every one of us would have felt, sixty 
 years ago, that the general tone and colouring of a style was 
 stiff, bookish, pedantic, which, from the habituation of our 
 organs, we now feel to be natural and within the privilege 
 
24 Style. 
 
 of learned art. Direct objective qualities it is always by 
 comparison easy to measure ; but the difficulty commences 
 when we have to combine with this outer measurement of 
 the object another corresponding measurement of the sub- 
 jective or inner qualities by which we apply the measure; 
 that is, when besides the objects projected to a distance 
 from the spectator, we have to allow for variations or dis- 
 turbances in the very eye which surveys them. The eye 
 cannot see itself; we cannot project from ourselves, and 
 contemplate as an object, our own contemplating faculty, or 
 appreciate our own appreciating power. Biasses, therefore, 
 or gradual warpings, that have occurred in our critical 
 faculty as applied to style, we cannot allow for : and these 
 biasses will unconsciously mask to our perceptions an 
 amount of change in the quality of popular style such as 
 we could not easily credit. 
 
 16. Separately from this change for the worse in the 
 drooping idiomatic freshness of our diction, which is a 
 change that has been going on for a century, the other 
 characteristic defect of this age lies in the tumid and 
 tumultuary structure of our sentences. The one change 
 has partly grown out of the other. Ever since a more 
 bookish air was impressed upon composition without much 
 effort by the Latinized and artificial phraseology, by forms 
 of expression consecrated to books, and by "long-tailed 
 words in osity and ation," — either because writers felt that 
 already, in this one act of preference shown to the artificial 
 vocabulary, they had done enough to establish a differential 
 character of regular composition, and on that consideration 
 thought themselves entitled to neglect the combination of 
 their words into sentences or periods ; or because there is a 
 real natural sympathy between the Latin phraseology and a 
 Latin structure of sentence, — certain it is and remarkable 
 that our popular style, in the common limited sense of 
 arrangement applied to words or the syntax of sentences, 
 
Defects of English Style. 25 
 
 has laboured with two faults that might have been thought 
 incompatible : it has been artificial, by artifices peculiarly- 
 adapted to the powers of the Latin language, and yet at the 
 very same time careless and disordinate. There is a strong 
 idea expressed by the Latin word inconditus, disorganized, 
 or rather unorganized. Now, in spite of its artificial bias, 
 that is the very epithet which will best characterize our 
 newspaper style. To be viewed as susceptible of organiza- 
 tion, such periods must already be elaborate and artificial; 
 to be viewed as not having received it, such periods must be 
 hyperbolically careless. 
 
 v. English Newspaper Style compared with the Style of the 
 French and Germans. 
 
 17. But perhaps the very best illustration of all this will 
 be found in putting the case of English style into close 
 juxtaposition with the style of the French and Germans, 
 our only very important neighbours. As leaders of civili- 
 sation, as powers in an intellectual sense, there are but three 
 nations in Europe — England, Germany, France. As to 
 Spain and Italy, outlying extremities, they are not moving 
 bodies ; they rest upon the past. Russia and North America 
 are the two bulwarks of Christendom east and west. But 
 the three powers at the centre are in all senses the motive 
 forces of civilisation. In all things they have the initiation, 
 and they preside. 
 
 18. By this comparison we shall have the advantage of 
 doing what the French express by s'orienter, the Germans by 
 sicli orientiren. Learning one of our bearings on the com- 
 pass, we shall be .able to deduce the rest, and we shall be 
 able to conjecture our valuation as respects the art by find- 
 ing our place amongst the artists. 
 
 19. With respect to French style, we can imagine the 
 '""astonishment of an English author practised in composition, 
 
26 Style. 
 
 and with no previous knowledge of French literature, who 
 should first find himself ranging freely amongst a French 
 library. That particular fault of style which in English 
 books is all but universal absolutely has not an existence in 
 the French. Speaking rigorously and to the very letter of 
 the case, we, upon a large experience in French literature, 
 affirm that it would be nearly impossible (perhaps strictly 
 so) to cite an instance of that cumbrtfus and unwieldy 
 style which disfigures English composition so extensively. 
 Enough could not be adduced to satisfy the purpose of 
 illustration. And, to make a Frenchman sensible of the 
 fault as a possibility, you must appeal to some translated 
 model. 
 
 20. But why? The cause of this national immunity from 
 a fault so common everywhere else, and so natural when we 
 look into the producing occasions, is as much entitled to our 
 notice as the immunity itself. The fault is inevitable, as 
 one might fancy, to two conditions of mind :' hurry in the 
 first place p want of art in the second. The French must be 
 liable to these disadvantages as much as their neighbours; 
 by what magic is it that they evade them or neutralize them 
 in the result ? The secret lies here; beyond all nations, by 
 constitutional vivacity, the French are a nation of talkers, 
 and the model of their sentences is moulded by that fact. 
 Conversation, which is a luxury for other nations, is for 
 them a necessity; by the very law of their peculiar intellect 
 and of its social training they are colloquial. Hence it 
 happens that there are no such people endured or ever heard 
 of in France as aZloquial wits, — people who talk to but not 
 with a circle: the very finest of their beaux esprits must 
 submit to the equities of conversation, and would be crushed 
 summarily as monsters if they were to seek a selfish mode 
 of display or a privilege of lecturing any audience of a salon 
 who had met for purposes of social pleasure. " De Mono- 
 logue, " as Madame de Stael, in her broken English, described 
 
Defects of English Style. 27 
 
 this mode of display when speaking of Coleridge, is so far 
 from being tolerated in France as an accomplishment that it 
 is not even understood as a disease. This kind of what may 
 be called irresponsible talk, when a man runs on perpetuo 
 tenore, not accountable for any opinion to his auditors, open 
 to no contradiction, liable to no competition, has sometimes 
 procured for a man in England the affix of River to his name : 
 Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis cevum. In Dryden's 
 happy version, — 
 
 "He flows, and, as he flows, for ever will flow on." 
 
 But that has been in cases where the talking impulse was 
 sustained by mere vivacity of animal spirits, without knowl- 
 edge to support it, and liable to the full weight of Arch- 
 bishop Huet's sarcasm, that it was a diarrhoea of garrulity, 
 a.fluxe de bouche. But in cases like that of Coleridge, where 
 the solitary display, if selfish, is still dignified by a pomp 
 of knowledge, and a knowledge which you feel to have been 
 fused and combined by the genial circumstances of the 
 speaker's position in the centre of an admiring circle, we 
 English do still recognise the me'tier of a professional talker 
 as a privileged mode of social display. People are asked 
 to come and hear such a performer, as you form a select 
 party to hear Thalberg or Paganini. The thing is under- 
 stood at least with us ; right or wrong there is an under- 
 standing amongst the company that you are not to interrupt 
 the great man of the night. You may prompt him by a 
 question ; you may set him in motion ; but to begin arguing 
 against him would be felt as not less unseasonable than to 
 insist on whistling Jim Crow during the bravuras and tours 
 deforce of great musical artists. 1 
 
 21. In France, therefore, from the intense adaptation of 
 the national mind to real colloquial intercourse, for which 
 1 Cf. De Quincey's essay on ' Conversation.' 
 
28 .Style. 
 
 reciprocation is indispensable, the form of sentence in use 
 is adjusted to that primary condition; brief, terse, simple; 
 shaped to avoid misunderstanding, and to meet the impa- 
 tience of those who are waiting for their turn. People who 
 write rapidly everywhere write as they talk ; it is impossi- 
 ble to do otherwise. Taking a pen into his hand, a man 
 frames his periods exactly as he would do if addressing a 
 companion. So far the Englishman and the Frenchman are 
 upon the same level. Suppose them, therefore, both prepar- 
 ing to speak: an Englishman in such a situation has no 
 urgent motive for turning his thoughts to any other object 
 than the prevailing one of the moment, viz. how best to 
 convey his meaning. That object weighs also with the 
 Frenchman; but he has a previous, a paramount, object to 
 watch — the necessity of avoiding des longueurs. The rights, 
 the equities of conversation are but dimly present to the 
 mind of the Englishman. From the mind of a Frenchman 
 they are never absent. To an Englishman, the right of 
 occupying the attention of the company seems to inhere in 
 tilings rather than in persons ; if the particular subject under 
 discussion should happen to be a grave one, then, in right 
 of that, and not by any right of his own, a speaker will seem 
 to an Englishman invested with the privilege of drawing 
 largely upon the attention of a company. But to a French- 
 man this right of participation in the talk is a personal 
 right, which cannot be set aside by any possible claims in 
 the subject ; it passes by necessity to and fro, backwards 
 and forwards, between the several persons who are present ; 
 and, as in the games of battledore and shuttlecock, or of 
 "hunt the slipper," the momentary subject- of interest never 
 can settle or linger for any length of time in any one indi- 
 vidual without violating the rules of the sport, or suspend- 
 ing its movement. Inevitably, therefore, the structure of 
 sentence must for ever be adapted to this primary function 
 of the French national intellect, the function of communi- 
 
Defects of English Style. 29 
 
 cativeness, and to the necessities (for to the French they 
 are necessities) of social intercourse, and (speaking plainly) 
 of interminable garrulity. 
 
 22. Hence it is that in French authors, whatever may 
 otherwise be the differences of their minds, or the differ- 
 ences of their themes, uniformly we find the periods short, 
 rapid, unelaborate : Pascal or Helvetius, Condillac or Eous- 
 seau, Montesquieu or Voltaire, Buffon or Duclos, — all alike 
 are terse, perspicuous, brief. Even Mirabeau or Chateau- 
 briand, so much modified by foreign intercourse, in this 
 point adhere to their national models. Even Bossuet or 
 Bourdaloue, where the diffusiveness and amplitude of 
 oratory might have been pleaded as a dispensation, are not 
 more licentious in this respect than their compatriots. One 
 rise in every sentence, one gentle descent, that is the law 
 for French composition ; x even too monotonously so ; and 
 thus it happens that such a thing as a long or an involved 
 sentence can hardly be produced from French literature, 
 though a sultan were to offer his daughter in marriage to 
 the man who should find it. Whereas now, amongst us Eng- 
 lish, not only is the too general tendency of our sentences 
 towards hpyerbolical length, but it will be found continually 
 that, instead of one rise and one corresponding fall — one 
 arsis and one thesis — there are many. Flux and reflux, swell 
 and cadence, that is the movement for a sentence; but our 
 modern sentences agitate us by rolling fires after the fashion 
 of those internal earthquakes that, not content with one 
 throe, run along spasmodically in a long succession of inter- 
 mitting convulsions. 
 
 23. It is not often that a single fault can produce any 
 vast amount of evil. But there are cases where it does ; 
 
 1 A principle of criticism which the French inherited from the Italians. 
 " Ogni clausula, come ha principio casi ha mezzo e fine : nel principio si va 
 movendo, e ascende ; nel mezzo quasi stanca dalla fatica, stando in pie si 
 posa alquanto; poi discende, e vola al fine per acquetarsi." — Speroni, 
 'Dialogo della Rhetorica,' (Aldus, 1543) fol. 149. 
 
30 Style. 
 
 and this is one: the effect of weariness and of repulsion 
 which may arise from this single vice of unwieldy compre- 
 hensiveness in the structure of sentences cannot better be 
 illustrated than by a frank exposure of what often happens 
 to ourselves, and (as we differ as to this case only by con- 
 sciously noticing what all feel) must often happen to others. 
 In the evening, when it is natural that we should feel a crav- 
 ing for rest, some book lies near us which is written in a style 
 clear, tranquil, easy to follow. Just at that moment comes 
 in the wet newspaper, dripping with the dewy freshness of 
 its news ; and even in its parliamentary memorials promis- 
 ing so much interest that, let them be treated in what 
 manner they may, merely for the subjects they are often 
 commandingly attractive. The attraction indeed is but too 
 potent; the interest but too exciting. Yet, after all, many 
 times we lay aside the journal, and we acquiesce in the 
 gentler stimulation of the book. Simply the news we may 
 read; but the discussions, whether direct from the editor, 
 or reported from the Parliament, we refuse or we delay. 
 And why? It is the subject, perhaps you think; it is the 
 great political question, too agitating by the consequences 
 it may happen to involve. No. All this, if treated in a 
 winning style, we could bear. It is the effort, the toil, the 
 exertion of mind requisite to follow the discussion through 
 endless and labyrinthine sentences; this it is that compels 
 us to forgo the journal or to lay it aside until the next 
 morning. 
 
 24. Those who are not accustomed to watch the effects of 
 
 composition upon the feelings, or have had little experience 
 
 in voluminous reading pursued for weeks, would scarcely 
 
 ■, imagine how much of downright physical exhaustion is 
 
 I produced by what is technically called the periodic style of 
 
 ; writing : it is not the length, the airepavroXoyia, the paralytic 
 
 flux of words, — it is not even the cumbrous involution of 
 
 parts within parts, — separately considered, that bears so 
 
Defects of English Style. 31 
 
 heavily upon the attention. It is the suspense, the hold- 
 ing-on of the mind until what is called the L cnroSocw, or 
 coming round of the sentence commences ; this it is which 
 wears out the faculty of attention. A sentence, for exam- 
 ple, begins with a series of ifs; perhaps a dozen lines are 
 occupied with expanding the conditions under which some- 
 thing is affirmed or denied: here you cannot dismiss and 
 have done with the ideas as you go along, for as yet all is 
 hypothetic ; all is suspended in air. The conditions are not 
 fully to be understood until you are acquainted with the 
 dependency; you must give a separate attention to each 
 clause of this complex hypothesis, and yet, having done that 
 by a painful effort, you have done nothing at all; for you 
 must exercise a reacting attention through the correspond- 
 ing latter section, in order to follow out its relations to all 
 parts of the hypothesis which sustains it. In fact, under 
 the rude yet also artificial character of newspaper style, each 
 separate monster period is a vast arch, which, not receiving 
 its keystone, not being locked into self-supporting cohesion, 
 until you nearly reach its close, imposes of necessity upon 
 the unhappy reader all the onus of its ponderous weight 
 through the main process of its construction. The continued 
 repetition of so Atlantean an effort soon overwhelms your 
 patience, and establishes at length that habitual feeling 
 which causes you to shrink from the speculations of jour- 
 nalists, or (which is more likely) to adopt a worse habit than 
 absolute neglect, which we shall notice immediately. 
 
 25. Meantime, as we have compared ourselves on this 
 important point with the French, let us now complete our 
 promise by noticing our relation in the same point to the 
 Germans. Even on its own account, and without any view 
 to our present purpose, the character of German prose is 
 an object of legitimate astonishment. Whatever is bad in 
 our own ideal of prose style, whatever is repulsive in our 
 own practice, we see there carried to the most outrageous 
 
32 Style. 
 
 excess. Herod is out-Heroded, Sternhold 1 is out-Stern- 
 holded, with a zealotry of extravagance that really seems 
 like wilful burlesque. Lessing, Herder, Paul Bichter, and 
 Lichtenberg, with some few beside, either prompted by 
 nature or trained upon foreign models, have avoided the 
 besetting sin of German prose. Any man of distinguished 
 talent, whose attention has been once called steadily to this 
 subject, cannot fail to avoid it. The misfortune of most 
 writers has been that, once occupied with the interest of 
 things, and overwhelmed by the embarrassments of disputed 
 doctrines, they never advert to any question affecting what 
 they view, by comparison, as a trifle. The to docendum, the 
 thing to be taught, has availed to obscure or even to anni- 
 hilate for their eyes every anxiety as to the mode of teach- 
 ing. And, as one conspicuous example of careless style acts 
 by its authority to create many more, we need not wonder 
 at the results, even when they reach a point of what may 
 be called monstrous. Among ten thousand offenders, who 
 carry their neglect of style even to that point, we would 
 single out Immanuel Kant. Such is the value of his phi- 
 losophy in some sections, and partially it is so very capable 
 of a lucid treatment, intelligible to the plainest man of 
 reflective habits, that within no long interval we shall cer- 
 tainly see him naturalised amongst ourselves: there are 
 particular applications of his philosophy, not contemplated 
 by himself, for which we venture to predict that even the 
 religious student will ultimately be thankful, when the 
 cardinal principles have been brought under a clear light 
 of interpretation. Attention will then be forced upon his 
 style, and facts will come forward not credible without 
 experimental proof. For instance, we have lying before us 
 at this moment his Gritik der Practischen Vernunft in the 
 unpirated edition of Hartknoch, the respectable publisher of 
 
 1 Referring to Thomas Sternhold, whose metrical paraphrase of the 
 Psalms (1548 and 1549) is uncouth in the extreme. 
 
Defects of English Style. 33 
 
 all Kant's great -works. The text is therefore authentic, 
 and, being a fourth edition (Riga, 1797), must be presumed 
 to have benefited by the author's careful revision. We 
 have no time for search; but, on barely throwing open the 
 book, we see a sentence at pp. 70, 71, exactly covering one 
 whole octavo page of thirty-one lines (each line averaging 
 forty-five to forty-eight letters). 1 Sentences of the same 
 calibre, some even of far larger bore, we have observed in 
 this and other works of the same author. And it is not 
 the fact taken as an occasional possibility, it is the prevail- 
 ing character of his style, that we insist on as the most 
 formidable barrier to the study of his writings, and to the 
 progress of what will soon be acknowledged as important in 
 his principles. A sentence is viewed by him, and by most 
 of his countrymen, as a rude mould or elastic form admit- 
 ting of expansion to any possible extent : it is laid down as 
 a rough outline, and then by superstruction and epi-super- 
 struction it is gradually reared to a giddy altitude which 
 no eye can follow. Yielding to his natural impulse of 
 subjoining all additions, or exceptions, or modifications, not 
 in the shape of separate consecutive sentences, but as inter- 
 calations and stuffings of one original sentence, Kant might 
 naturally enough have written a book from beginning to 
 end in one vast hyperbolical sentence. We sometimes see 
 an English Act of Parliament which does literally accom- 
 plish that end, by an artifice which in law has a purpose and 
 a use. Instead of laying down a general proposition, which 
 is partially false until it has received its proper restraints, 
 the framer of the act endeavours to evade even this momen- 
 tary falsehood by coupling the limitations with the very 
 primary enunciation of the truth: e.g. A shall be entitled, 
 provided always that he is under the circumstances of e, or 
 i, or o, to the right of X. Thus, even a momentary compli- 
 ance with the false notion of an absolute unconditional 
 1 See Appendix. 
 
34 Style. 
 
 claim to X is evaded; a truth which is only a conditional 
 truth is stated as such from the first. There is, therefore, 
 a theoretic use. But what is the practical result ? Why, 
 that, when you attempt to read an Act of Parliament where 
 the exceptions, the secondary exceptions to the exceptions, 
 the limitations and the sublimitations, descend, seriatim, by 
 a vast scale of dependencies, the mind finds itself overtasked; 
 the energy of the most energetic begins to droop ; and so 
 inevitable is that result that Mr. Pitt, a minister unusually 
 accomplished for such process by constitution of mind and 
 by practice, publicly avowed his inability to follow so try- 
 ing a conflict with technical embarrassments. He declared 
 himself to be lost in the labyrinth of clauses : the Ariadne's 
 clue was wanting for his final extrication : and he described 
 his situation at the end with the simplicity natural to one 
 who was no charlatan, and sought for no reputation by the 
 tricks of a funambulist : " In the crowd of things excepted 
 and counter-excepted, he really ceased to understand the 
 main point — what it was that the law allowed, and what 
 it was that it disallowed." 
 
 26. We might have made our readers merry with the 
 picture of German prose ; but we must not linger. It is 
 enough to say that it offers the counterpole to the French 
 style. Our own popular style, and (what is worse) the 
 tendency of our own, is to the German extreme. To those 
 who read German, indeed, German prose, as written by the 
 mob of authors, presents, as in a Brobdingnagian and exag- 
 gerating mirror, the most offensive faults of our own. 
 
 27. But these faults — are they in practice so wearisome 
 and exhausting as we have described them? Possibly not; 
 and, where that happens to be the case, let the reader ask 
 himself if it is not by means of an evasion worse in its 
 effects than any fault of style could ever prove in its most 
 overcharged form. Shrinking, through long experience, 
 from the plethoric form of cumulation and " periodic " writ- 
 
Defects of English Style. 35 
 
 ing in which the journalist supports or explains his views, 
 every man who puts a business value upon his time slips 
 naturally into a trick of shorthand reading. It is more 
 even by the effort and tension of mind in holding on than by 
 the mere loss of time that most readers are repelled from 
 the habit of careful reading. An evil of modern growth is 
 met by a modern remedy. Every man gradually learns an 
 art of catching at the leading words, and the cardinal or 
 hinge joints of transition, which proclaim the general course 
 of a writer's speculation. Now, it is very true, and is 
 sure to be objected, that, where so much is certain to prove 
 mere iteration and teasing surplusage, little can be lost by 
 this or any other process of abridgment. Certainly, as 
 regards the particular subject concerned, there may be no 
 room to apprehend a serious injury. Not there, not in any 
 direct interest, but in a far larger interest — indirect for the 
 moment, but the most direct and absolute of all interests 
 for an intellectual being, — the reader suffers a permanent 
 debilitation. He acquires a factitious propensity ; he forms 
 an incorrigible habit of desultory reading. Now, to say of 
 a man's knowledge, that it will be shallow, or (which is 
 worse than shallow) will be erroneous and insecure in its 
 foundations, is vastly to underrate the evil of such a habit : 
 it is by reaction upon a man's faculties, it is by the effects 
 reflected upon his judging and reasoning powers, that loose 
 habits of reading tell eventually. And these are durable 
 effects. Even as respects the minor purpose of information, 
 better it is, by a thousandfold, to have read threescore of 
 books (chosen judiciously) with severe attention than to 
 have raced through the library of the Vatican at a news- • 
 paper pace. But, as respects the final habits acquired, 
 habits of thinking coherently and of judging soundly, better 
 that a man should have not read one line throughout his life 
 than have travelled through the journals of Europe by this 
 random process of "reading short." 
 
36 Style. 
 
 28. Yet, by this Parthian habit of aiming at full gallop, 
 — of taking flying shots at conspicuous marks, and, like 
 Parthians also, directing their chance arrows whilst retreat- 
 ing, and revolting with horror from a direct approach to the 
 object, — thus it is that the young and the flexible are trained 
 amongst us under the increasing tyranny of journalism. A 
 large part of the evil, therefore, belongs to style; for it is 
 this which repels readers, and enforces the shorthand process 
 of desultory reading. A large part of the evil, therefore, 
 is of a nature to receive a remedy. 
 
 29. It is with a view to that practical part of the exten- 
 sive evil that we have shaped our present notice of popular 
 style, as made operative amongst ourselves. One single 
 vice of periodic syntax, — -a vice unknown to the literature 
 of Greece, and, until Paterculus, 1 even of Rome (although 
 the language of Rome was so naturally adapted to that 
 vice), — has with us counterbalanced all possible vices of 
 any other order. Simply by the vast sphere of its agency 
 for evil, in the habits of mind which it produces and sup- 
 ports, such a vice merits a consideration which would 
 else be disproportionate. Yet, at the same time, it must 
 not be forgotten that, if the most operative of all vices, 
 after all it is but one. What are the others ? 
 
 vi. Style as Organic and as Mechanic. 
 
 30. It is a fault, amongst many faults, of such works as 
 we have on this subject of style, that they collect the list of 
 qualities, good or bad, to which composition is liable, not 
 under any principle from which they might be deduced a 
 priori, so as to be assured that all had been enumerated, 
 but by a tentative groping, a mere conjectural estimate. 
 The word style has with us a twofold meaning: one, the 
 narrow meaning, expressing the mere synthesis onomaton, 
 1 Circa B.C. 19-a.d. 31. 
 
Defects of English Style. 37 
 
 the syntaxis or combination of words into sentences; the 
 other of far wider extent, and expressing all possible rela- 
 tions that can arise between thoughts and words — the total 
 effectof a writer as derived from manner. Style may be 
 viewed~as an organic thing and as a mechanic thing. By; 
 organic, we mean that which, being acted upon, reacts, and/ 
 which propagates the communicated power without loss] 
 By mechanic, that which, being impressed with motionA 
 cannot throw it back without loss, and therefore soon comes | 
 to an end. The human body is an elaborate system of 
 organs ; it is sustained by organs. But the human body is 
 exercised as a machine, and as such may be viewed in the 
 arts of riding, dancing, leaping, &c, subject to the laws of 
 motion and equilibrium. Now, the use of words is an 
 organic thing, in so far as language is connected with 
 thoughts, and modified by thoughts. It is a mechanic 
 thing, in so far as words in combination determine or modify 
 each other. The science of style as an organ of thought, of 
 style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called 
 the organology of style. The science of style considered as 
 a machine, in which words act upon words, and through a 
 particular grammar, might be called the mechanology of 
 style. It is of little importance by what name these two 
 functions of composition are expressed. But it is of great 
 importance not to confound the functions : that function by 
 which style maintains a commerce with thought, and that 
 by which it chiefly communicates with grammar and with 
 words. A pedant only will insist upon the names ; but the 
 distinction in the ideas, under some name, can be neglected 
 only by the man who is careless of logic. 
 
 31. We know not how far we may be ever called upon to 
 proceed with this discussion. If it should happen that we 
 were, an interesting field of questions would lie before us 
 for the first part (the organology). It would lead us over 
 the ground trodden by the Greek and Roman rhetoricians, 
 
38 Style. 
 
 and over those particular questions which have arisen by 
 the contrast between the circumstances of the ancients and 
 our own since the origin of printing. Punctuation, 1 trivial 
 as such an innovation may seem, was the product of typog- 
 raphy; and it is interesting to trace the effects upon style 
 even of that one slight addition to the resources of logic. 
 Previously a man was driven to depend for his security 
 against misunderstanding upon the pure virtue of his syn- 
 tax. 2 Miscollocation or dislocation of related words dis- 
 turbed the whole sense ; its least effect was to give no sense, 
 — often it gave a dangerous sense. Now, punctuation was 
 an artificial machinery for maintaining the integrity of the 
 sense against all mistakes of the writer ; and, as one conse- 
 quence, it withdrew the energy of men's anxieties from the 
 natural machinery, which lay in just and careful arrange- 
 ment. Another and still greater machinery of art for the 
 purpose of mantaining the sense, and with the effect of 
 
 1 This is a most instructive fact ; and it is another fact not less instruc- 
 tive that lawyers in most parts of Christendom, I believe, certainly wher- 
 ever they are wide-awake professionally, tolerate no punctuation. But 
 why ? Are lawyers not sensible to the luminous effect from a point happily 
 placed ? Yes, they are sensible ; but also they are sensible of the false pre- 
 judicating effect from a punctuation managed (as too generally it is) care- 
 lessly and illogically. Here is the brief abstract of the case. All punctua- 
 tion narrows the path, which is else unlimited ; and (by narrowing it) may 
 chance to guide the reader into the right groove amongst several that are 
 not right. But also punctuation has the effect very often (and almost 
 always has the power) of Massing and predetermining the reader to an 
 erroneous choice of meaning. Better, therefore, no guide at all than one 
 which is likely enough to lead astray, and which must always be sus- 
 pected and mistrusted, inasmuch as very nearly always it has the power to 
 lead astray. — De Q. 
 
 2 " It is a general rule that the composition should be such as is easy to 
 read and — which is the same thing — easy to deliver. But this will not be 
 the case where there are many connecting words or clauses or where the 
 punctuation is difficult, as in the writings of Heracleitus. It is no easy 
 task to punctuate his writings, from the difficulty of determining to which 
 of two words, the preceding or the following, a particular word in his 
 sentences belongs." — Aristotle, 'Rhetoric,' III., 5, Welldon's Trans. 
 
Defects of English Style. 39 
 
 relaxing the care of the 'writer, lay in the exquisitely arti- 
 ficial structure of the Latin language, which by means of its 
 terminal forms indicated the arrangement, and referred the 
 proper predicate to the proper subject, spite of all that 
 affectation or negligence could do to disturb the series of 
 the logic or the succession of the syntax. Greek, of course, 
 had the same advantage in kind, but not in degree; and 
 thence rose some differences which have escaped all notice 
 of rhetoricians. Here also would properly arise the ques- 
 tion, started by Charles Fox (but probably due originally 
 to the conversation of some far subtler friend, such as 
 Edmund Burke), how far the practice of footnotes — a 
 practice purely modern in its form, — is reconcilable with 
 the laws of just composition : and whether in virtue, though 
 not in form, such footnotes did not exist for the ancients, 
 by an evasion we could point out. The question is clearly 
 one which grows out of style in its relations to thought : 
 how far, viz., such an excrescence as a note argues that the 
 sentence to which it is attached has not received the benefit 
 of a full development for the conception involved ; whether, 
 if thrown into the furnace again and re-melted, it might not 
 be so recast as to absorb the redundancy which had previ- 
 ously flowed over into a note. Under this head would fall 
 not only all the differential questions of style and composi- 
 tion between us and the ancients, but also the questions of 
 merit as fairly distributed amongst the moderns compared 
 with each other. The French, as we recently insisted, 
 undoubtedly possess one vast advantage over all other 
 nations in the good taste which governs the arrangement of 
 their sentences; in the simplicity (a strange pretension to 
 make for anything French) of the modulation under which 
 their thoughts flow ; in the absence of all cumbrous involu- 
 tion, and in the quick succession of their periods. In 
 reality this invaluable merit tends to an excess ; and the 
 style coupe" as opposed to the style soutenu, flippancy opposed 
 
40 Style. 
 
 to solemnity, the subsultory to the continuous, these are 
 the too x frequent extremities to which the French manner 
 betrays men. Better, however, to be flippant than by a 
 revolting form of tumour and perplexity to lead men into 
 habits of intellect such as result from the modern vice of 
 English style. Still, with all its practical value, it is evi- 
 dent that the intellectual merits of the French style are but 
 small. They are chiefly negative, in the first place ; and, 
 secondly, founded in the accident of their colloquial neces- 
 sities. The law of conversation has prescribed the model 
 of their sentences, and in that law there is quite as much of 
 self-interest at work as of respect for equity. Hanc veniam 
 petimusque damusque vicissim. Give and take is the rule; 
 and he who expects to be heard must condescend to listen; 
 which necessity for both parties binds over both to be brief. 
 Brevity so won could at any rate have little merit, and it is 
 certain that for profound thinking it must sometimes be a 
 hindrance. In order to be brief a man must take a short 
 sweep of view; his range of thought cannot be extensive; 
 and such a rule, applied to a general method of thinking, is 
 fitted rather to aphorisms and maxims, as upon a known 
 subject, than to any process of investigation as upon a sub- 
 ject yet to be fathomed. Advancing still further into the 
 examination of style as the organ of thinking, we should 
 find occasion to see the prodigious defects of the French in 
 all the higher qualities of prose composition. One advan- 
 tage, for a practical purpose of life, is sadly counterbalanced 
 by numerous faults, many of which are faults of stamina, 
 lying not in any corrigible defects, but in such as imply 
 penury of thinking from radical inaptitude in the thinking 
 faculty to connect itself with the feeling and with the crea- 
 tive faculty of the imagination. There are many other 
 researches belonging to this subtlest of subjects, affecting 
 both the logic and the ornaments of style, which would fall 
 1 So in Blackwood's, but two in the Collected Works. 
 
Defects of English Style. 41 
 
 under the head of organology. But for instant practical 
 use, though far less difficult for investigation, yet for that 
 reason far more tangible and appreciable, would be all the 
 suggestions proper to the other head of mechanology. Half 
 a dozen rules for evading the most frequently recurring 
 forms of awkwardness, of obscurity, of misproportion, and 
 of double meaning, 1 would do more to assist a writer in 
 practice, laid under some necessity of hurry, than volumes 
 of general disquisition. It makes us blush to add that even' 
 grammar is so little of a perfect attainment amongst us 
 that, with two or three exceptions (one being Shakspere, 
 whom some affect to consider as belonging to a semi-barbar- 
 ous age), we have never seen the writer, through a circuit of 
 prodigious reading, 2 who has not sometimes violated the 
 accidence or the syntax of English grammar. 
 
 32. Whatever becomes of our own possible speculations, 
 we shall conclude with insisting on the growing necessity 
 of style as a practical interest of daily life. Upon subjects 
 of public concern, and in proportion to that concern, there 
 will always be a suitable (and as letters extend a growing) 
 competition. Other things being equal, or appearing to bft 
 equal, the determining principle for the public choice will 
 lie in the style. Of a German book, otherwise entitled to 
 respect, it was said — enlasst sich nicht lesen — it does not 
 permit itself to be read, such and so repulsive was the style. 
 Among ourselves this has long been true of newspapers. 
 They do not suffer themselves to be read in extenso; and 
 they are read short, with what injury to the mind we have 
 noticed. The same style of reading, once largely prac- 
 
 1 Practical manuals of the kind here suggested have appeared, since De 
 Quincey's time, in bewildering profusion. Abbott's ' How to Write Clearly ' 
 is one of the simplest of them. 
 
 2 To the position of this clause Prof. A. S. Hill (' Principles of Rhetoric,' 
 p. 2, note) takes exception — unnecessarily, as it seems to the editor, for 
 the present arrangement causes no ambiguity and is demanded by the 
 rhythm of the sentence. 
 
42 Style. 
 
 tised, is applied universally. To this special evil an 
 improvement of style would apply a special redress. The 
 same improvement is otherwise clamorously called for by 
 each man's interest of competition. Public luxury, which 
 is gradually consulted by everything else, must at length be 
 consulted in style. 
 
PART II. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF PKOSE. 
 i. Origin of Prose. 
 
 33. It is a natural resource that 'whatsoever we find it 
 difficult to investigate as a result we endeavour to follow as 
 a growth. Failing analytically to probe its nature, histori- 
 cally we seek relief to our perplexities by tracing its origin. 
 Not able to assign the elements of its theory, we endeavour 
 to detect them in the stages of its development. Thus, for 
 instance, when any feudal institution (be it Gothic, Nor- 
 man, or Anglo-Saxon) eludes our deciphering faculty from 
 the imperfect records of its use and operation, then we 
 endeavour conjecturally to amend our knowledge by watch- 
 ing the circumstances in which that institution arose ; and, 
 from the necessities of the age, as indicated by facts which 
 have survived, we are sometimes able to trace, through all 
 their corresponding stages of growth, the natural succession 
 of arrangements which such necessities would be likely to 
 prescribe. 
 
 34. This mode of oblique research, where a more direct 
 one is denied, we find to be the only one in our power. And, 
 with respect to the liberal arts, it is even more true than 
 with respect to laws or institutions, because remote ages 
 widely separated differ much more in their pleasures than 
 they can ever do in their social necessities. To make prop- 
 erty safe and life sacred, — that is everywhere a primary 
 purpose of law. But the intellectual amusements of men 
 
 43 
 
44 Style. 
 
 are so different that the very purposes and elementary- 
 functions of these amusements are different. They point to 
 different ends as well as different means. The Drama, for 
 instance, in Greece, connects itself with Eeligion; in other 
 ages, Religion is the power most in resistance to the Drama. 
 Hence, and because the elder and ruder ages are most fa- 
 vourable to a ceremonial and mythological religion, we find 
 the tragedy of Greece defunct before the literary age arose. 
 Aristotle's era may be taken as the earliest era of refine- 
 ment and literary development. But Aristotle wrote his 
 Essay on the Greek Tragedy just a century after the chefs- 
 d'oeuvre of that tragedy had been published. 1 
 
 35. If, therefore, it is sometimes requisite for the 
 proper explanation even of a law or legal usage that we 
 should go to its history, not looking for a sufficient key to 
 its meaning in the mere analogies of our own social neces- 
 sities, much more will that be requisite in explaining an art 
 or a mode of intellectual pleasure. Why it was that the an- 
 cients had no landscape painting, is a question deep almost 
 as the mystery of life, and harder of solution than all the 
 problems of jurisprudence combined. 2 What causes moulded 
 the Tragedy of the ancients could hardly be guessed if we 
 did not happen to know its history and mythologic origin. 
 And, with respect to what is called Style, not so much as a 
 sketch, as an outline, as a hint, could be furnished towards 
 the earliest speculations upon this subject, if we should 
 overlook the historical facts connected with its earliest 
 development. 
 
 36. What was it that first produced into this world that 
 celebrated thing called Prose ? It was the bar, it was the 
 
 1 Aeschylus, 525-456 B.C.; Sophocles, 496-405 B.C.; Euripides, 480-406 
 B.C. ; Aristotle, 384-322 B.C. 
 
 2 See Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 115, ' The Taste for the Picturesque 
 among the Greeks,' by E. M. Cope ; and Mahaffy's ' Social Life in Greece,' 
 3d ed., last chapter. 
 
Development of Prose. 45 
 
 hustings, it was the Bema (to pr^fw). What Gibbon and 
 most historians of the Mussulmans have rather absurdly 
 called the pulpit of the Caliphs should rather be called the 
 rostrum, the Roman military suggestus, or Athenian bema. 
 The fierce and generally illiterate Mohammedan harangued 
 his troops; preach he could not; he had no subject for 
 preaching. 1 jSTow, this function of man in almost all states 
 
 1 "No subject": — If he had a subject, what was it? As to the sole 
 'doctrines of Islam — the unity of God, and the mission of Mahomet as his 
 chief prophet (i.e. not predictor or foreseer, but interpreter) — that must 
 he presumed known to every man in a Mussulman army, since otherwise 
 he could not have been admitted into the army. But these doctrines might 
 require expansion, or at least evidence? Not at all: the Mussulman be- 
 lieves them incapable of either. But at least the Caliph might mount the 
 pulpit in order to urge the primary duty of propagating the true faith? 
 No; it was not the primary duty, it was a secondary duty; else there 
 would have been no option allowed — tribute, death, or conversion. Well 
 then, the Caliph might ascend the pulpit for the purpose of enforcing a 
 secondary duty? No, he could not, because that was no duty of time or 
 place ; it was a postulate of the conscience at all times alike, and needed 
 no argument or illustration. Why, then, what was it that the Caliph 
 talked about ? It was this : He praised the man who had cut most throats ; 
 he pronounced the funeral panegyric of him who had his own throat cut 
 under the banners of the Prophet; he explained the prudential merits of 
 the next movement or of the next campaign. In fact, he did precisely 
 what Pericles did, what Seipio did, what Csesar did, what it was a regular 
 part of the Eoman Imperator's commission to do, both before a battle and 
 after a battle, and universally under any circumstances which make an 
 explanation necessary. What is now done in " general orders " was then 
 committed to a viva voce communication. Trifling communications prob- 
 ably devolved on the six centurions of each cohort (or regiment) ; graver 
 communications were reserved to the Imperator, surrounded by his staff. 
 Why we should mislead the student by calling this solemnity of addressing 
 an army from a tribunal or svgyestus by the irrelevant name of preaching 
 from a pulpit can only be understood by those who perceive the false view 
 taken of the Mohammedan faith and its relation to the human mind. It 
 was certainly a poor plagiarism from the Judaic and the Christian creeds ; 
 but it did not rise so high as to conceive of any truth that needed or that 
 admitted intellectual development, or that was susceptible of exposition and 
 argument. However, if we will have it that the Caliph preached, then did 
 his lieutenant say Amen. If Omar was a parson, then certainly Caled was 
 his clerk. — De Q. 
 
46 Style. 
 
 of society, the function of public haranguing, was, for the 
 Pagan man who had no printing-press, more of a mere ne- 
 cessity through every mode of public life than it is for the 
 modern man of Christian light ; for, as to the modern man 
 of Mohammedan twilight, his perfect bigotry denies him 
 this characteristic resource of Christian energies. Just four 
 centuries have we of the Cross propagated our light by this 
 memorable invention ; just four centuries have the slaves of 
 the Crescent clung to their darkness by rejecting it. Chris- 
 tianity signs her name; Islamism makes her mark. And 
 the great doctors of the Mussulmans take their stand pre- 
 cisely where Jack Cade took his a few years after printing 
 had been discovered. Jack and they both made it felony 
 to be found with a spelling-book, and sorcery to deal with, 
 syntax. 
 
 37. Yet, with these differences, all of us alike, Pagan, 
 Mussulman, Christian, have practised the arts of public 
 speaking as the most indispensable resource of public 
 administration and of private intrigue. Whether the pur- 
 pose were to pursue the interests of legislation, or to con- 
 duct the business of jurisprudence, or to bring the merits of 
 great citizens pathetically before their countrymen; or (if 
 the state were democratic enough) oftentimes to explain the 
 conduct of the executive government; oftentimes also to 
 prosecute a scheme of personal ambition: whether the 
 audience were a mob, a senate, a judicial tribunal, or an 
 army : equally (though not in equal degrees) for the Pagan 
 of 2500 years back, and for us moderns, the arts of public 
 speaking, and consequently of prose as opposed to metrical 
 composition, have been the capital engine, the one great 
 intellectual machine of civil life. 
 
 38. This to some people may seem a matter of course. 
 " Would you have men speak in rhyme? " We answer that, 
 when society comes into a state of refinement, the total uses 
 of language are developed in common with other arts; but 
 
Development of Prose. 47 
 
 originally, and whilst man was in his primitive condition 
 of simplicity, it must have seemed an unnatural, nay an 
 absurd, thing to speak in prose. For in those elder days 
 the sole justifying or exciting cases for a public harangue 
 would be cases connected with impassioned motives. Rare 
 they would be, as they had need to be, where both the " hon. 
 gentleman " who moves, and his " hon. friend " who seconds, 
 are required to speak in Trimeter Iambic. Hence the ne- 
 cessity that the oracles should be delivered in verse. Who 
 ever heard of a prose oracle? And hence, as Grecian taste 
 expanded, the disagreeable criticisms whispered about in 
 Athens as to the coarse quality of the verses that proceeded 
 from Delphi. It was like bad Latin from Oxford. Apollo 
 himself to turn out of his own temple, in the very age of 
 Sophocles, such Birmingham hexameters as sometimes aston- 
 ished Greece, was like our English court keeping a Stephen 
 Duck, 1 the thresher, for the national poet-laureate, at a time 
 when Pope was fixing an era in the literature. Metre fell 
 to a discount in such learned times. But in itself metre 
 must always have been the earliest vehicle for public enun- 
 ciations of truth among men, for these obvious reasons : — 
 1. That, if metre rises above the standard of ordinary 
 household life, so must any truth of importance and singu- 
 larity enough to challenge a public utterance; 2. That, 
 because religious communications will always have taken a 
 metrical form by a natural association of feeling, whatsoever 
 is invested with a privileged character will seek something 
 of a religious sanction by assuming the same external shape ; 
 
 1 Wrote ' Thresher's Labor ' and ' The Shunamite ' and received from 
 the Queen a pension of £20 and a living. In 1756 committed suicide by 
 drowning. 
 
 " Behold ! Ambitious of the British bays, 
 Cibber and Duck contend in rival lays. 
 But, gentle Colley, should thy verBe prevail, 
 Tbou hast no fence, alas ! against bis flail : 
 Therefore thy claim resign, allow his right: 
 For Duck can thresh, you know, as well as fight." — Pope. 
 
48 Style. 
 
 and, 3. That expressions, or emphatic verbal forms, which 
 are naturally courted for the sake of pointed effect, receive a 
 justification from metre, as being already a departure from 
 common usage to begin with, whereas in plain prose they 
 would appear so many affectations. Metre is naturally and 
 necessarily adopted in cases of impassioned themes, for the 
 very obvious reason that rhythmus is both a cause of impas- 
 sioned feeling, an ally of such feeling, and a natural effect of 
 it; but upon other subjects, not impassioned, metre is also 
 a subtle ally, because it serves to introduce and to reconcile 
 with our sense of propriety various arts of condensation, of 
 antithesis, and other rhetorical effects, which, without the 
 metre (as a key for harmonizing them) would strike the 
 feelings as unnatural or as full of affectation. Interroga- 
 tions, for example, passionate ejaculations, &c, seem no 
 more than natural when metre (acting as a key) has attuned 
 and prepared the mind for such effects. The metre raises 
 the tone of colouring so as to introduce richer tints without 
 shocking or harshly jarring upon the presiding key, when 
 without this semi-conscious pitching of the expectations the 
 sensibility would have been revolted. Hence, for the very 
 earliest stages of society, it will be mere nature that prompts 
 men to metre ; it is a mode of inspiration, it is a promise 
 of something preternatural; and less than preternatural can- 
 not be any possible emergency that should call for a public 
 address. Only great truths could require a man to come 
 forward as a spokesman; he is then a sort of interpreter 
 between God and man. 
 
 39. At first, therefore, it is mere nature which prompts 
 metre. Afterwards, as truth begins to enlarge itself — as 
 truth loses something of its sanctity by descending amongst 
 human details — that mode of exalting it, and of courting 
 attention, is dictated by artifice, which originally was a 
 mere necessity of nature raised above herself. For these 
 reasons, it is certain that men challenging high authentic 
 
Development of Prose. 49 
 
 character will continue to speak by metre for many genera- 
 tions after it has ceased to be a mere voice of habitual 
 impulse. Whatsoever claims an oracular authority will 
 take the ordinary external form of an oracle. And, after 
 it has ceased to be a badge of inspiration, metre will be re- 
 tained as a badge of professional distinction. Pythagoras, 
 for instance, within five centuries of Christ, Thales or The- 
 ognis, will adopt metre out of a secondary prudence; Or- 
 pheus and the elder Sibyl, out of an original necessity. 
 
 40. Those people are therefore mistaken who imagine 
 that prose is either a natural or a possible form of compo- 
 sition in early states of society. It is such truth only as 
 ascends from the earth, not such as descends from heaven, 
 which can ever assume an unmetrical form. Now, in the 
 earliest states of society, all truth that has any interest or 
 importance for man will connect itself with heaven. If it 
 does not originally come forward in that sacred character, 
 if it does not borrow its importance from its sanctity, then, 
 by an inverse order, it will borrow a sanctity from its 
 importance. Even agricultural truth, even the homeliest 
 truths of rural industry, brought into connexion with relig- 
 ious inspiration, will be exalted (like the common culinary 
 utensils in the great vision of the Jewish prophet) and 
 transfigured into vessels of glorious consecration. 1 All 
 things in this early stage of social man are meant mysteri- 
 ously, have allegoric values; and week-day man moves 
 amongst glorified objects. So that, if any doctrine, prin- 
 ciple, or system of truth, should call for communication at 
 all, infallibly the communication will take the tone of a 
 revelation; and the holiness of a revelation will express 
 itself in the most impassioned form, perhaps with accom- 
 paniments of music, but certainly with metre. 
 
 i Ezekiel xlvi. 19-24. 
 
50 Style. 
 
 ii. Greek Prose — Herodotus and Thucydides. 
 
 41. Prose, therefore, strange as it may seem to say so, 
 was something of a discovery. 1 If not great invention, 
 at least great courage, would be required for the man who 
 should first swim without the bladders of metre. It is all 
 very easy talking when you and your ancestors for fifty 
 generations back have talked prose. But that man must 
 have had triplex ces about his prcecordia who first dared to 
 come forward with pure prose as the vehicle for any impas- 
 sioned form of truth. Even the first physician who dared 
 to lay aside the ample wig and gold-headed cane needed 
 extra courage. All the Jovian terrors of his traditional 
 costume laid aside, he was thrown upon his mere natural 
 resources of skill and good sense. Who was the first lion- 
 hearted man that ventured to make sail in this frail boat of 
 prose ? We believe the man's name is reputed to have been 
 Pherecydes. 2 But, as nothing is less worth remembering 
 than the mere hollow shell of a name where all the pulp 
 and the kernel is gone, we shall presume Herodotus to have 
 been the first respectable artist in prose. And what was 
 this worthy man's view of prose ? Prom the way in which 
 he connected his several books or " fyttes " with the names 
 of the muses, and from the romantic style of his narratives, 
 as well as from his using a dialect which had certainly 
 become a poetic dialect in literary Greece, it is pretty clear 
 that Herodotus stood, and meant to stand, on that isthmus 
 between the regions of poetry and blank unimpassioned 
 prose which in modern literature is occupied by such works 
 
 1 Jebb (' Attic Orators,' I., p. cxi) connects the rise of Greek prose with 
 the development of democratic and corporate life. 
 
 2 Pherecydes, born in the island of Syros in the sixth century B.C., wrote, 
 under the title Heptamyehos, the first prose cosmogony and theogony. 
 The style of the fragments that have been preserved, borders on the 
 poetical. 
 
Development of Prose. 51 
 
 as Mort d' Arthur. In Thucydides, we see the first exhibi- 
 tion of stern philosophic prose. And, considering the very- 
 brief interval between the two writers, — who stand related 
 to each other, in point of time, pretty much as Dryden and 
 Pope, — it is quite impossible to look for the solution of 
 their characteristic differences in the mere graduations of 
 social development. Pericles, as a young man, would most 
 certainly ask Herodotus to dinner, if business or curiosity 
 ever drew that amiable writer to Athens. As an elderly 
 man, Pericles must often have seen Thucydides at his 
 levees; although by that time the sacrifice of his "social 
 pleasure ill exchanged for power " may have abridged his 
 opportunity of giving " feeds " to literary men. But will 
 anybody believe that the mere advance of social refinement, 
 within the narrow period of one man's public life, could 
 bring about so marvellous a change as that the friend of his 
 youth should naturally write very much in the spirit of Sir 
 John Mandeville, and the friend of his old age like Maeh- 
 iavel or Gibbon ? No, no : the difference between these two 
 writers does not reflect the different aspects of literary 
 Greece at two eras so slightly removed, too great to be 
 measured by that scale, as though those of the picturesque 
 Herodotus were a splendid semi-barbarous generation, those 
 of the meditative Thucydides, speculative, political, experi- 
 mental; but we must look to subjective differences of taste 
 and temperament in the men. The men, by nature, and by 
 powerful determination of original sensibility, belong to 
 different orders of intellect. Herodotus was the Froissart 
 of antiquity. He was the man that should have lived to 
 record the crusades. Thucydides, on the other hand, was 
 obviously the Tacitus of Greece, who (had he been privi- 
 leged to benefit by some metempsychosis dropping him into 
 congenial scenes of modern history) would have made his 
 election for the wars of the French League, or for our Parlia- 
 mentary war, or for the colossal conflicts which grew out of 
 
52 Style. 
 
 the French Eevolution. The one was the son of nature, 
 fascinated by the mighty powers of chance or of tragic 
 destiny, as they are seen in elder times moulding the form 
 of empires, or training the currents of revolutions. The 
 other was the son of political speculation, delighting to 
 
 trace the darker agencies which brood in the mind of man 
 
 the subtle motives, the combinations, the plots which gather 
 in the brain of " dark viziers " when intrusted with the fate 
 of millions, and the nation-wielding tempests which move 
 at the bidding of the orator. 
 
 42. But these subjective differences were not all. They 
 led to objective differences, by determining each writer's 
 mind to a separate object. Does any man fancy that these 
 two writers imagined, each for himself, the same audience ? 
 Or, again, that each represented his own audience as 
 addressed from the same station ? The earlier of the two, 
 full of those qualities which fit a man for producing an 
 effect as an artist, manifestly comes forward in a theatrical 
 character, and addresses his audience from a theatrical sta- 
 tion. Is it readers whom he courts ? No, but auditors. 
 Is it the literary body whom he addresses — a small body 
 everywhere ? No, but the public without limitation. Pub- 
 lic ! but what public ? Not the public of Lacedsemon, drunk 
 with the gloomy insolence of self-conceit; not the public of 
 Athens, amiably vain, courteous, affable, refined ! No: it 
 is the public of universal Hellas, an august congress repre- 
 senting the total civilisation of the earth, — so that of any 
 man not known at Olympia, prince, emperor, whatever he 
 might call himself, if he were not present in person or by 
 proxy, you might warrantably affirm that he was homo 
 ignorabilis — a person of whose existence nobody was bound 
 to take notice ; a man to be ignored 1 by a grand jury. This 
 representative champ de Mai Herodotus addressed. And 
 in what character did he address it ? What character did 
 
 1 See paragraph 2 of the essay on ' Language.' 
 
Development of Prose. 53 
 
 he ascribe to the audience ? What character did he assume 
 to himself ? Them he addressed sometimes in their general 
 character of human beings, but still having a common inter- 
 est in a central network of civilisation, investing a certain 
 ring-fence, beginning in Sicily and Carthage, whence it ran 
 round through Libya, Egypt, Syria, Persia, the Ionian belt 
 or zone, and terminating in the majestic region of Men — ■ 
 the home of liberty, the Pharos of truth and intellectual 
 power, the very region in which they were all at that 
 moment assembled. There was such a collective body, 
 dimly recognised at times by the ancients, as corresponds 
 to our modern Christendom, and having some unity of pos- 
 sible interest by comparison with the unknown regions of 
 Scythias, Indias, and Ethiopias, lying in a far wider circle 
 beyond — regions that, from their very obscurity, and from 
 the utter darkness of their exterior relations, must at times 
 have been looked to with eyes of anxiety as permanently 
 harbouring that possible deluge of savage eruption which, 
 about one hundred and fifty years after, did actually swallow 
 up the Grecian colony of Bactria (or Bokhara), as founded by 
 Alexander ; swallowed it so suddenly and so effectually that 
 merely the blank fact of its tragical catastrophe has reached 
 posterity. It was surprised probably in one night, like 
 Pompeii by Vesuvius, or like the planet itself by Noah's 
 flood; or more nearly its fate resembled those starry bodies 
 which have been seen, traced, recorded, fixed in longitude 
 and latitude for generations, and then suddenly are observed 
 to be missing by some of our wandering telescopes that keep 
 watch and ward over the starry heavens. The agonies of a 
 perishing world have been going on, but all is bright and 
 silent in the heavenly host. Infinite space has swallowed 
 up the infinite agonies. Perhaps the only record of Bactria 
 was the sullen report of some courier from Susa, who would 
 come back with his letters undelivered, simply reporting 
 that, on reaching such a ferry on some nameless river, or 
 
54 Style. 
 
 such an outpost upon a heath, he found it in possession of 
 a fierce, unknown race, the ancestors of future Affghans or 
 Tartars. 
 
 43. Such a catastrophe, as menacing by possibility the 
 whole of civilisation, and under that hypothetical peril as 
 giving even to Greece herself an interest in the stability 
 even of Persia, her sole enemy, — a great resisting mass 
 interjacent between Greece and the unknown enemies to the 
 far northeast or east, — could not but have mixed occa- 
 sionally with Greek anticipations for the future, and in a 
 degree quite inappreciable by us who know the geographi- 
 cal limits of Asia. To the ancients, these were by possi- 
 bility, in a strict sense, infinite. The terror from the 
 unknown Scythians of the world was certainly vague and 
 indistinct; but, if that disarmed the terror or broke its 
 sting, assuredly the very same cause would keep it alive, for 
 the peril would often swell upon the eye merely from its 
 uncertain limits. Far oftener, however, those glorious cer- 
 tainties revolved upon the Grecian imagination which pre- 
 sented Persia in the character of her enemy than those 
 remote possibilities which might connect her as a common 
 friend against some horrid enemy from the infinite deserts 
 of Asia. In this character it was that Herodotus at times 
 addressed the assembled Greece, at whose bar he stood. 
 That the intensity of this patriotic idea intermitted at 
 times ; that it was suffered to slumber through entire books : 
 this was but an artist's management which caused it to 
 swell upon the ear all the more sonorously, more clamor- 
 ously, more terrifically, when the lungs of the organ filled 
 once more with breath, when the trumpet-stop was opened, 
 and the " foudroyant " style of the organist commenced the 
 hailstone chorus from Marathon. Here came out the char- 
 acter in which Herodotus appeared. The Iliad had taken 
 Greece as she was during the building of the first temple at 
 Jerusalem — in the era of David and Solomon — a thousand 
 
Development of Prose. 55 
 
 years before Christ. The eagle's plume in her cap at 
 that era was derived from Asia. It was the Troad, it was 
 Asia, that in those days constituted the great enemy of 
 Greece. Greece universal had been confederated against 
 the Asia of that day, and, after an Iliad of woes, had tri- 
 umphed. But now another era of five hundred years has 
 passed since Troy. Again there has been a universal war 
 raging between Greece and a great foreign potentate ; again 
 this enemy of Greece is called Asia. But what Asia ? The 
 Asia of the Iliad was a petty maritime Asia. But Asia 
 now means Persia; and Persia, taken in combination with 
 its dependencies of Syria and Egypt, means the world, 17 
 oiKov)Leirq. The frontier line of the Persian Empire 
 " marched " or confined with the Grecian ; but now so vast 
 was the revolution effected by Cyrus that, had not the 
 Persians been withheld by their dismal bigotry from culti- 
 vating maritime facilities, the Greeks must have sunk under 
 the enormous power now brought to bear upon them. At 
 one blow, the whole territory of what is now Turkey in 
 Asia, — viz. the whole of Anatolia and of Armenia, — had 
 been extinguished as a neutral and interjacent force for 
 Greece. At one blow, by the battle of Thymbra, the Per- 
 sian armies had been brought nearer by much more than a 
 thousand miles to the gates of Greece. 
 
 44. That danger it is necessary to conceive, in order to 
 conceive that subsequent triumph. Herodotus — whose 
 family and nearest generation of predecessors must have 
 trembled, after the thoughtless insult offered to Sardis, 
 under the expectation of the vast revenge prepared by the 
 Great King — must have had his young imagination filled 
 and dilated with the enormous display of Oriental power, 
 and been thus prepared to understand the terrific collisions 
 of the Persian forces with those of Greece. He had heard 
 in his travels how the glorious result was appreciated in 
 foreign lands. He came back to Greece with a twofold 
 
56 Style. 
 
 freight of treasures. He had two messages for his country. 
 One was a report of all that was wonderful in foreign lands : 
 all that was interesting from its novelty or its vast antiquity; 
 all that was regarded by the natives for its sanctity, or by 
 foreigners with amazement as a measure of colossal power 
 in mechanics. And these foreign lands, we must remember, 
 constituted the total world to a Greek. Rome was yet in 
 her infant days, unheard of beyond Italy. Egypt and the 
 other dependencies of Persia composed the total map south 
 of Greece. Greece, with the Mediterranean islands, and 
 the eastern side of the Adriatic, together with Macedon and 
 Thrace, made up the world of Europe. Asia, which had not 
 yet received the narrow limitation imposed upon that word 
 by Rome, was co-extensive with Persia; and it might be 
 divided into Asia cis-Tigritana, and Asia iraws-Tigritana: 
 the Euxine and the Caspian were the boundaries to the 
 north; and to one advancing further the Oxus was the 
 northern boundary, and the Indus the eastern. The Pun- 
 jab, as far as the river Sutlege, — that is, up to our present 
 British cantonments at Loodiana, — was indistinctly sup- 
 posed to be within the jurisdiction of the Great King. 
 Probably he held the whole intervening territory of the late 
 Runjeet Singh, as now possessed by the Sikhs. And beyond 
 these limits all was a mere zodiac of visionary splendour, 
 or a dull repetition of monotonous barbarism. 
 
 45. The report which personal travels enabled Herodotus 
 to make of this extensive region, composing neither more 
 nor less than the total map of the terraqueous globe as it 
 was then supposed to exist (all the rest being a mere Nova 
 Zembla in their eyes), was one of two revelations which the 
 great traveller had to lay at the feet of Greece. The other 
 was a connected narrative of their great struggle with the 
 King of Persia. The earth bisected itself into two parts — 
 Persia and Greece. All that was not Persia was Greece: 
 all that was not Greece was Persia. The Greek traveller 
 
JJevetopment of Jr'rose. £>l 
 
 was prepared to describe the one section to the other section, 
 and, having done this, to relate in a connected shape the 
 recent tremendous struggle of the one section with the other. 
 Here was Captain Cook fresh from his triple circumnavi- 
 gation of the world : here was Mungo Park fresh from the 
 Niger and Timbuctoo : here was Bruce fresh from the coy 
 fountains of the Nile : here were Phipps, Franklin, Parry, 
 from the Arctic circle : here was Leo Africanus from Moorish 
 palaces : here was Mandeville from Prester John, and from 
 the Cham of Tartary, and 
 
 " From Agra and Lahore of Great Mogul." 
 
 This was one side of the medal; and on the other was the 
 patriotic historian who recorded what all had heard by 
 fractions, but none in a continuous series. Now, if we 
 consider how rare was either character in ancient times, 
 how difficult it was to travel where no passport made it safe, 
 where no preparations in roads, inns, carriages, made it con- 
 venient; that, e-ven five centuries in advance of this era, 
 little knowledge was generally circulated of any region 
 unless so far as it had been traversed by the Roman legions ; 
 considering the vast credulity of the audience assembled, a 
 gulf capable of swallowing mountains, and, on the other 
 hand, that here was a man fresh from the Pyramids and the 
 Nile, from Tyre, from Babylon and the temple of Belus, a 
 traveller who had gone in with his sickle to a harvest yet 
 untouched; that this same man, considered as a historian, 
 spoke of a struggle with which the earth was still agitated ; 
 that the people who had triumphed so memorably in this 
 war happened to be the same people who were then listen- 
 ing; that the leaders in this glorious war, whose names had 
 already passed into spiritual powers, were the fathers of 
 the present audience: combining into one picture all these 
 circumstances, one must admit that no such meeting be- 
 
58 Style. 
 
 tween -giddy expectation and the very excess of power to 
 meet its most clamorous calls is likely to have occurred 
 before or since upon this earth. Hither had assembled 
 people from the most inland and most illiterate parts of 
 Greece, — people that would have settled a pension for life 
 upon any man who would have described to them so much as 
 a crocodile or ichneumon. To these people the year of his 
 public recitation would be the meridian year of their lives. 
 He saw that the whole scene would become almost a dra- 
 matic work of art : in the mere gratification of their curi- 
 osity, the audience might be passive and neutral; but in 
 the history of the war they became almost actors, as in a 
 dramatic scene. This scenical position could not escape 
 the traveller-historian. His work was recited with the 
 exaggeration that belongs to scenic art. It was read prob- 
 ably with gesticulations by one of those thundering voices 
 which Aristophanes calls a " damnable " voice, from its ear- 
 piercing violence. 
 
 iii. Greek Prose — the Philosophers. 
 
 46. Prose is a thing so well known to all of us, — most 
 of our " little accounts " from shoemakers, dressmakers, 
 &c, being made out in prose ; most of our sorrows and of 
 our joys having been communicated to us through prose, 
 and very few indeed through metre (unless on St. Valen- 
 tine's day), — that its further history, after leaving its 
 original Olympic cradle, must be interesting to everybody. 
 Who were they that next took up the literary use of Prose ? 
 Confining our notice to people of celebrity, we may say that 
 the House of Socrates (Domus Socratica is the expression 
 of Horace) were those who next attempted to popularize 
 Greek prose, — viz. the old gentleman himself, the founder 
 of the concern, and his two apprentices, Plato and Xeno- 
 phon. We acknowledge a sneaking hatred towards the 
 
Development of I'rose. t>y 
 
 whole household, founded chiefly on the intense feeling we 
 entertain that all three were humbugs. 1 We own the stony 
 impeachment. Aristotle, who may be looked upon as liter- 
 ary grandson to Socrates, is quite a different person. But 
 for the rest we cherish a sentimental (may we call it a 
 Platonic ?) disgust. As relates to the style, however, in 
 which they have communicated their philosophy, one feat- 
 ure of peculiarity is too remarkable to pass without com- 
 ment. Some years ago, in one of our four or five Quarterly 
 Reviews {Theological it was, Foreign, or else Westminster), 
 a critical opinion was delivered with respect to a work of 
 Coleridge's which opens a glimpse into the true philosophy 
 of prose composition. It was not a very good-natured opin- 
 ion in that situation, since it was no more true of Coleridge 
 than it is of every other man who adopts the same aphoris- 
 tic form of expression for his thoughts ; but it was eminently 
 just. Speaking of Coleridge's "Aphorisms/' the reviewer 
 observed that this detached and insulated form of deliver- 
 ing thoughts was, in effect, an evasion of all the difficulties 
 connected with composition. Every man, as he walks 
 through the streets, may contrive to jot down an indepen- 
 dent thought, a shorthand memorandum of a great truth. 
 So far as that purpose is concerned, even in tumultuous 
 London, 
 
 "Purse sunt platese, nihil ut meditantibus obstet." 
 
 Standing on one leg you may accomplish this. The labour 
 of composition begins when you have to put your separate 
 threads of thought into a loom ; to weave them into a con- 
 tinuous whole ; to connect, to introduce them ; to blow 
 them out or expand them ; to carry them to a close. All 
 this evil is evaded by the aphoristic form. This one re- 
 mark, we repeat, lifts up a corner of that curtain which 
 hangs over the difficult subjects of style and composition. 
 
 1 See De Quincey's " slashing " essay on ' Plato's Republic' 
 
60 Style. 
 
 Indicating what is not in one form, it points to what is in 
 others. It was an original remark, we doubt not, to the 
 reviewer. But it is too weighty and just to have escaped 
 meditative men in former times ; and accordingly the very 
 same remark will be found 150 years ago expanded in the 
 Huetiana. 1 
 
 47. But what relation had this remark to the House of 
 Socrates ? Did they write by aphorisms ? No, certainly ; 
 but they did what labours with the same radical defect, 
 considered in relation to the true difficulties of composition. 
 Let us dedicate a paragraph to these great dons of liters 
 ture. If we have any merely English scholars amongst our 
 readers, it may be requisite first to inform them that Socrar 
 tes himself wrote nothing. He was too much occupied with 
 his talking — " ambitiosa loquela." In this respect Socrates 
 differed, as in some others that we could mention, from the 
 late Mr. Coleridge, who found time both for talking and for 
 writing at the least 25 volumes octavo. From the pupils 
 of Socrates it is that we collect his pretended philosophy; 
 and, as there were only two of these pupils who published, 
 and as one of them intensely contradicts the other, it would 
 be found a hard matter at Nisi Prms to extract any verdict 
 as to what it was that constituted the true staple of the 
 Socratic philosophy. We fear that any jury who undertook 
 that question would finally be carted to the bounds of the 
 county, and shot into the adjacent county like a ton of coals. 
 For Xenophon uniformly introduces the worthy henpecked 
 philosopher as prattling innocent nothings, more limpid 
 than small beer; whilst Plato never lets him condescend to 
 
 1 " The essays of Montaigne are genuine Montaniana, that is to say, a 
 collection of the thoughts of Montaigne without arrangement or correction. 
 This circumstance has, perhaps, contributed as much as any to render 
 them favorites with our nation, an enemy to the continued attention which 
 long dissertations demand, and with the present age which dislikes the 
 application required in continuous and methodical treatises." — Huet's 
 ' Huetiana.' 
 
Development of Prose. 61 
 
 any theme less remote from humanity than those of Hermes 
 Trismegistus. 1 One or other must be a liar. And the man- 
 ner of the philosopher, under these two Boswellian reporters, 
 is not less different than his matter. With Xenophon, he 
 reminds us much of an elderly hen, superannuated a little, 
 pirouetting to " the hen's march," and clucking vociferously ; 
 with Plato, he seems much like a deep-mouthed hound in a 
 chase after some unknown but perilous game, — much as 
 such a hound is described by Wordsworth, ranging over the 
 aerial heights of Mount Bighi, 2 his voice at times muffled 
 by mighty forests, and then again swelling as he emerges 
 upon the Alpine breezes, whilst the vast intervals between 
 the local points from which the intermitting voice ascends 
 proclaim the storm pace at which he travels. In Plato 
 there is a gloomy grandeur at times from the elementary 
 mysteries of man's situation and origin, snatches of music 
 from some older and Orphic philosophy, which impress 
 a vague feeling of solemnity towards the patriarch of the 
 school, though you can seldom trace his movement through 
 all this high and vapoury region. You would be happy, 
 therefore, to believe that there had been one word of truth 
 in ascribing such colloquies to Socrates ; but how that can 
 be, when you recollect the philosophic vappa of Xenophon, 
 seems to pass the deciphering power of CEdipus. 
 
 48. Now, this body of inexplicable discord between the 
 two evangelists of Socrates, as to the whole sources from 
 which he drew his philosophy, as to the very wells from 
 which he raised it, and the mode of medicating the draught, 
 makes it the more worthy of remark that both should have 
 obstinately adopted the same disagreeable form of composi- 
 tion. Both exhibit the whole of their separate speculations 
 under the form of dialogue. It is always Socrates and 
 Crito, or Socrates and Phaedrus, or Socrates and Ischoma- 
 
 1 De Quincey's antithesis is characteristically extravagant. 
 
 2 See the poem ' Echo, upon the Gemmi,' Knight's ed., Vol. VI., p. 267. 
 
62 Style. 
 
 chus, — in fact, Socrates and some man of straw or good- 
 humoured, nine-pin set up to be bowled down as a matter 
 of course. How inevitably the reader feels his fingers itch- 
 ing to take up the cudgels instead of Crito for one ten min- 
 utes ! Had we been favoured with an interview, we can 
 answer for it that the philosopher should not have had it 
 all his own way ; there should have been a " scratch " at 
 least between us ; and, instead of waiting to see Crito pun- 
 ished without delivering one blow that would "have made 
 a dint in a pound of butter," l posterity should have formed 
 a ring about us, crying out " Pull baker, pull devil," accord- 
 ing as the accidents of the struggle went this way or that. 
 If dialogue must be the form, at least it should not have 
 been collusive dialogue. Whereas, with Crito and the rest 
 of the men who were in training for the part of disputants, 
 it was a matter of notoriety that, if they presumed to put 
 in a sly thrust under the ribs of the philosopher, the So- 
 cratic partisans, ot a/i<£i tov %<i>Kpa.T7jv, would kick them into 
 the kennel. It was a permanent " cross " that was fought 
 throughout life between Socrates and his obsequious antag- 
 onists. 
 
 49. As Plato and Xenophon must have hated each other 
 with a theological hatred, it is a clear case that they would 
 not have harmonized in anything if they had supposed it 
 open to evasion. They would have got another atmosphere 
 had it been possible. Diverging from each other in all 
 points beside, beyond doubt they would have diverged as to 
 this form of dialogue, had they not conceived that it was 
 essential to the business of philosophy. It is plain from 
 this one fact how narrow was the range of conception which 
 the Socratic school applied to the possible modes of dealing 
 with polemic truth. They represented the case thus : — 
 -Truth, they fancied, offered itself by separate units, by 
 moments (to borrow a word from dynamics), by what 
 
 1 Quoted from Prof. Wilson. See note to the essay ' The Pagan Oracles.' 
 
Development of Prose. 63 
 
 Cicero calls " apices rerum " and " punctiunculee." Each 
 of these must be separately examined. It was like the items 
 in a disputed account. There must be an auditor to check 
 and revise each severally for itself. This process of audit- 
 ing could only be carried on through a brisk dialogue. The 
 philosopher in monologue was like a champion at a tourna- 
 ment with nobody to face him. He was a chess-player with 
 no opponent. The game could not proceed. But how mean 
 and limited a conception this was, which lay as a basis for 
 the whole Socratic philosophy, becomes apparent to any 
 man who considers any ample body of truth, whether po- 
 lemic truth, or not, in all its proportions. Yet, in all this, 
 we repeat, the Socratic weakness is not adequately exposed. 
 There is a far larger and subtler class of cases where the 
 arguments for and against are not susceptible of this sepa- 
 rate valuation. One is valid only through and by a second, 
 which second again is involved in a third ; and so on. 
 Thus, by way of a brief instance, take all the systems of 
 Political Economy which have grown up since Turgot and 
 Quesnel. They are all polemic : that is, all have moulded 
 themselves in hostility to some other systems ; all had their 
 birth in opposition. But it would be impossible to proceed 
 Somatically with any one of them. 1 If you should attempt 
 to examine Eicardo sentence by sentence, or even chapter 
 for chapter, his apologist would loudly resist such a process 
 as inapplicable. You must hold on; you must keep fast 
 hold of certain principles until you have time to catch hold 
 of certain others — seven or eight, suppose ; and then from 
 the whole taken in continuation, but not from any one as 
 an insulated principle, you come into a power of adjudicat- 
 ing upon the pretensions of the whole theory. The Doctrine 
 of Value, for example, could you understand that taken 
 apart ? could you value it apart ? As a Socratic logician, 
 
 1 May we not, however, look upon the political economists as pursuing 
 the Socratic method one with another ? 
 
64 Style. 
 
 ■could you say- of it either affirmatur or negatur, until you 
 see it coming round and revolving in the doctrines of rent, 
 profits, machinery, &c, which are so many functions of 
 value; and which doctrines first react with a weight of 
 verification upon the other ? x 
 
 50. These, unless parried, are knock-down blows to the 
 Socratic, and therefore to the Platonic, philosophy, if 
 treated as a modus philosophandi ; and, if that philosophy 
 is treated as a body of doctrines apart from any modus or 
 ratio docendi, we should be glad to hear what they are, — 
 for we never could find auy whatever in Plato or Xenophon 
 which are insisted on as essential. Accidental hints and 
 casual suggestions cannot be viewed as doctrines in that 
 sense which is necessary to establish a separate school. 
 And all the German Tiedemanns and Tennemanns, the 
 tedious men and the tenpenuy-men, that have written 
 their twelve or their eighteen volumes viritim upon Plato, 
 will find it hard to satisfy their readers unless they make 
 head against these little objections, because these objec- 
 tions seem to impeach the very method of the 'Socraticae 
 Chartse,' and, except as the authors or illustrators of a 
 method, the Socratici are no school at all. 
 
 51. But are not we travelling a little out of our proper 
 field in attacking this method? Our business was with 
 this' method considered as a form of style, not considered as 
 a form of logic. True, rigorous reader ! Yet digressions 
 and moderate excursions have a licence. Besides which, 
 on strict consideration, doubts arise whether we have been 
 digressing; for whatsoever acted as a power on Greek prose 
 through many ages, whatsoever gave it a bias towards any 
 one characteristic excess, becomes important in virtue of its 
 relations to our subject. Now, the form of dialogue so 
 obstinately maintained by the earliest philosophers who 
 used prose as the vehicle of their teaching had the unhappy 
 
 1 But Cf. De Quincey's own ' Templar's Dialogues.' 
 
Development of Prose. 65 
 
 effect of impressing, from the earliest era of Attic litera- 
 ture, a colloquial taint upon the prose literature, of that 
 country. The great authority of Socrates, maintained for 
 ages by the windiest of fables, naturally did much to 
 strengthen this original twist in the prose style. About 
 fifty years after the death of Socrates, the writings of Aris- 
 totle were beginning to occupy the attention of Greece ; and 
 in them we see as resolute a departure from the dialogue 
 form as in his elders of the same house the adherence to 
 that form had been servile and bigoted. His style, though 
 arid from causes that will hereafter be noticed, was much 
 more dignified, or at least more grave and suitable to philo- 
 sophic speculation, than that of any man before him. Con- 
 temporary with the early life of Socrates was a truly great 
 man, Anaxagoras, the friend and reputed preceptor of Peri- 
 cles. It -is probable he may have written in the style of 
 Aristotle. Having great systematic truths to teach, such 
 as solved existing phenomena, and not such as raised fresh 
 phenomena for future solution, he would naturally adopt 
 the form of continuous exposition. Nor do we at this 
 moment remember a case of any very great man who had 
 any real and novel truth to communicate having adopted 
 the form of dialogue, excepting only the case of Galileo. 1 
 Plato, indeed, is reputed, and Galileo is known, to have ex- 
 acted geometry as a qualification in his. students, — that is, 
 in those who paid him a StSa/cTnov or fee for the privilege 
 of personally attending his conversations ; but he demanded 
 no such qualification in his readers, or else we can assure 
 him that very few copies of his Opera Omnia would have 
 been sold in Athens. This low qualification it was for the 
 
 1 Galileo published the substance of his speculations on the Copernican 
 System in the form of a conversation, in which his two friends Salviati 
 and Sagredo, and himself, under the name Simplicio, were the collocutors. 
 In his introduction he speaks of the dialogue as the continuation and 
 expansion of a colloquy that had actually taken place (' Opere,' Vol. 11, 
 pp. 77, 78). 
 
66 Style. 
 
 readers of Plato, and still more for those of Xenophon, 
 which operated to diffuse the reputation of Socrates. Be- 
 sides, it was a rare thing in Greece to see two men sounding 
 the trumpet on behalf of a third; and we hope it is not 
 ungenerous to suspect that each dallied with the same pur- 
 pose as our Chatterton and Macpherson, — viz. to turn round 
 on the public when once committed and compromised by- 
 some unequivocal applause, saying " Gentlemen of Athens, 
 this idol Socrates is a phantom of my brain : as respects the 
 philosophy ascribed to him, I am Socrates," — or, as Handel 
 (who, in consideration of his own preternatural appetite, 
 had ordered dinner for six) said to the astonished waiter 
 when pleading, as his excuse for not bringing up the dishes, 
 that he waited for the company, — " Yong man, I am de 
 gombany." 
 
 52. But in what mode does the conversational taint which 
 we trace to the writings of the Socratici, enforced by the 
 imaginary martyrdom of Socrates, express itself ? In what 
 forms of language ? By what peculiarities ? By what 
 defects of style ? We will endeavour to explain. One of 
 the Scaligers (if we remember, it was the elder), speaking 
 of the Greek article 6, y, to, called it loquacissimce gentis 
 flabellum. Now, pace superbissimi viri, this seems nonsense 
 because the use of the article was not capricious, but 
 grounded in the very structure and necessities of the Greek 
 language. Garrulous or not, the poor men were obliged, by 
 the philosophy of their tongue, to use the article in certain 
 situations; and, to say the truth, these situations were very 
 much the same as in English. Allowing for a few cases of 
 proper names, participles, or adjectives postponed to their 
 substantives, &c, the two general functions of the article 
 definite, equally in Greek and in English, are : 1st, to in- 
 dividualize, as, e.g., " It is not any sword that will do, I will 
 have the sword of my father"; and, 2d, the very opposite 
 function, viz. to generalize in the highest degree — a use 
 
Development of Prose. 67 
 
 which our best English grammars wholly overlook: as, e.g., 
 " Let the sword give way to the gown " — not that particular 
 sword, but every sword (where each is used as a represent- 
 ative symbol of the corresponding professions) ; " The peas- 
 ant presses on the kibes of the courtier " (where the class is 
 indicated by the individual). In speaking again of diseases 
 and the organs affected, we usually accomplish this general- 
 ization by means of the definite article. We say "He 
 suffered from a headache " ; but also we say " from tlie head- 
 ache " ; and invariably we say, " He died of the stone," &c. 
 And, though we fancy it a peculiarity of the French lan- 
 guage to say "Le coeur lui etait navre de douleur," yet we 
 ourselves say " The heart was affected in his case." In all 
 these uses of the definite article there is little real difference 
 between the Greek language and our own. The main dif- 
 ference is in the negative use ; in the meaning implied by 
 the absence of the article, which, with the Greeks, expresses 
 our article a, but with us is a form of generalization. In 
 all this there was nothing left free to the choice; and 
 Scaliger had no right to find any illustration of Greek 
 levity in what was unavoidable. 
 
 53. But what we tax as undignified in the Greek prose 
 style, as a badge of garrulity, as a taint from which the Greek 
 prose never cleansed itself, are all those forms of lively 
 colloquialism, with the fretfulness and hurry and demon- 
 strative energy of people unduly excited by bodily presence 
 and by ocular appeals to their sensibility. Such a style is 
 picturesque, no doubt. So is the Scottish dialect of low 
 life as first employed in novels by Sir Walter Scott ; that 
 dialect greatly assisted the characteristic expression ; it fur- 
 nished the benefit of a Doric dialect : but what man in his 
 senses would employ it in a grave work, and speaking in 
 his own person? ISTow, the colloquial expletives so pro- 
 fusely employed by Plato more than anybody, the forms 
 of his sentences, the forms of his transitions, and other 
 
68 Style. 
 
 intense peculiarities of the chattering man as opposed to 
 the meditating man, have crept over the face of Greek 
 literature ; and, though some people think everything holy 
 which is printed in Greek characters, we must be allowed to 
 rank these forms of expression as mere vulgarities. Some- 
 times, in Westmoreland, if you. chance to meet an ancient 
 father of his valley, — one who is thoroughly vernacular in 
 his talk, being unsinged by the modern furnace of revolution, 
 — you may have a fancy for asking him how far it is to the 
 next town. In which case you will receive for answer 
 pretty nearly the following words : — " Why like, it's gaily 
 nigh like to four mile like." JSTow, if the pruriency of your 
 curiosity should carry you to torment and vex this aged 
 man by pressing a special investigation into this word like, 
 the only result is likely to be that you will kill him, and do 
 yourself no good. Call it an expletive indeed! a filling up! 
 Why to him it is the only indispensable part of the sen- 
 tence ; the sole fixture. It is the balustrade which enables 
 him to descend the stairs of conversation without falling 
 overboard; and, if the word were proscribed by Parliament, 
 he would have no resource but in everlasting silence. Now, 
 the expletives of Plato are as gross, and must have been to 
 the Athenian as unintelligible, as those of the Westmoreland 
 peasant. It is true, the value, the effect to the feelings, 
 was secured by daily use and by the position in the sentence. 
 But so it is to the English peasant. Like in his use is a 
 modifying, a restraining, particle, which forbids you to 
 understand anything in a dangerous unconditional sense. 
 But then, again, the Greek particle of transition, that eter- 
 nal Se, and the introductory formula of /j.ev and 8c! How- 
 ever earnestly people may fight for them, because Greek is 
 now past mending, in fact the Se is strictly equivalent to the 
 whereby of a sailor: "whereby I went to London; whereby 
 I was robbed; whereby I found the man that robbed me"! 
 All relations, all modes of succession or transition, are indi- 
 
Development of Prose. 69 
 
 cated by one and the same particle. This could arise, even 
 as a licence, only in the laxity of conversation. But the 
 most offensive indication of the conversational spirit as 
 presiding in Greek prose is to be found in the morbid energy 
 of oaths scattered over the face of every prose composition 
 which aims at rhetorical effect. The literature is deformed 
 with a constant roulade of "by Jove," "by Minerva," &c, 
 as much as the conversation of high-bred Englishmen in the 
 reign of Charles II. In both cases this habit belonged to a 
 state of transition; and, if the prose literature of Greece 
 had been cultivated by a succession of authors as extended 
 as that of England, it would certainly have outworn this 
 badge of spurious energy. That it did not is a proof that the 
 Greek Literature never reached the consummation of art. 
 
PART III. 
 
 EPOCHS OP GREEK LITERATURE. 
 
 i. Outline. 
 
 54. Reader, you are beginning to suspect us. "How 
 long do we purpose to detain people ? " For anything that 
 appears we may be designing to write on to the twentieth 
 century, — for twice thirty years. " And whither are we 
 going ? towards what object ? " — which is as urgent a 
 quaere as how far. Perhaps we may be leading you into 
 treason, or (which indeed is pretty much the same thing) we 
 may be paving the way to " Repeal." 1 You feel symptoms 
 of doubt and restiveness ; and, like Hamlet with his father's 
 ghost, you will follow us no further, unless we explain what 
 it is that we are in quest of. 
 
 55. Our course, then, for the rest of our progress, — the 
 outline of our method, — will pursue the following objects. 
 We shall detain you a little longer on the Grecian Prose 
 Literature ; and we shall pursue that Literature within the 
 gates of Latium. What was the Grecian idea of style, what 
 the Roman, will appear as a deduction from this review. 
 With respect to the Greeks, we shall endeavour to show 
 that they had not arrived at a full expanded consciousness 
 of the separate idea expressed by style; and, va> order to 
 account for this failure, we shall point out the deflexion, 
 the bias, which was impressed upon the Greek speculations 
 in this particular by the tendency of their civil life. That 
 
 1 I.e. of the Corn-law. 
 70 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 71 
 
 was made important in the eyes of the speculative critic 
 which was indispensable for the actual practitioner ; that 
 was indispensable for the actual practitioner which was 
 exacted by the course of public ambition. The political 
 aspirant, who needed a command of fluent eloquence, 
 sought for so much knowledge (and no more) as promised 
 to be available in his own particular mode of competition. 
 The speculative critic or professional master of rhetoric 
 offered just so much information (and no more) as was 
 likely to be sought by his clients. Each alike cultivated 
 no more than experience showed him would be demanded. 
 But in Rome, and for a reason perhaps which will appear 
 worth pausing upon, a subtler conception of style was 
 formed, though still far from being perfectly developed. 
 The Romans, whether worse orators or not than the Gre- 
 cians, were certainly better rhetoricians. And Cicero, the 
 mighty master of language for the Pagan world, whom we 
 shall summon as our witness, will satisfy us that in this re- 
 search at least the Eoman intellect was more searching, and 
 pressed nearer to the undiscovered truth, than the Grecian. 
 56. From a particular passage in the De Oratore, which 
 will be cited for the general purpose here indicated of prov- 
 ing a closer approximation on the part of Roman thinkers 
 than had previously been made to the very heart of this 
 difficult subject, we shall take occasion to make a still nearer 
 approach for ourselves. We shall endeavour to bring up our 
 reader to the fence, and persuade him, if possible, to take 
 the leap which still remains to be taken in this field of style. 
 But, as we have reason to fear that he will " refuse " it, we 
 shall wheel him round and bring him up to it from another 
 quarter. A gentle touch of the spur may then perhaps carry 
 him over. Let not the reader take it to heart that we here 
 represent him under the figure of a horse, and ourselves in 
 a nobler character as riding him, and that we even take the 
 liberty of proposing to spur him. Anything may be borne 
 
72 Style. 
 
 in metaphor. Figuratively, one may kick a man without 
 offence. There are no limits to allegoric patience. But no- 
 matter who takes the leap, or how ; a leap there is which 
 must be taken in the course of these speculations oh style- 
 before the ground will be open for absolute advance. Every 
 man who has studied and meditated the difficulties of style 
 must have had a sub-conscious sense of a bar in his way at 
 a particular point of the road thwarting his free movement ; 
 he could not have evaded such a sense but by benefit of 
 extreme shallowness. That bar which we shall indicate 
 must be cleared away, thrown down, or surmounted. And 
 then the prospect will lie open to a new map, and a perfect 
 map, of the whole region. It will then become possible for 
 the first time to overlook the whole geography of the adja-' 
 cencies. An entire theory of the difficulties being before 
 the student, it will at length be possible to aid his ' efforts 
 by ample practical suggestions. Of these we shall ourselves 
 offer the very plainest, viz. those which apply to the 
 mechanology of style. For these there will be an easy 
 opening ; they will not go beyond the reasonable limits, 
 disposable for a single subject in a literary journal. As 
 to the rest, which would (G-ermanly speaking) require a 
 "strong" octavo for their full exposition, we shall hold 
 ourselves to have done enough in fulfilling the large promise 
 we have made — the promise of marking Out for subse- 
 quent cultivation and development all the possible subdi- 
 visions and sections amongst the resources of the rhetorician; 
 all the powers which he can employ, and therefore all the 
 difficulties which he needs to study, — the arts by which he 
 can profit, and, in correspondence with them, the obstacles 
 by which he will be resisted. Were this done, we should 
 no longer see those incoherent sketches which are now cu> 
 culating in the world upon questions of taste, of science, of 
 practical address, as applied to the management of style 
 and rhetoric ; the public ear would no longer be occupied 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 73 
 
 by feeble Frenchmen — Eollin, Eapin, Batteux, Bouhours, 
 Du Bos, 1 and id genus omne; nor by the elegant but desul- 
 tory Blair 2 ; nor by scores of others who bring an occasional 
 acuteness or casual information to this or that subsection of 
 their duty, whilst (taken as general guides) they are uni- 
 versally insufficient. No ; but the business of rhetoric, the 
 management of our mother-tongue in all offices to which it 
 can be applied, would become as much a matter of system- 
 atic art, as regular a subject for training and mechanic 
 discipline, as the science of discrete quantity in Arithmetic, 
 or of continuous quantity in Geometry. But will not that 
 be likely to impress a character of mechanic monotony upon 
 style, like the miserable attempts at reforming handwriting ? 
 Look at them, touch them, or, if you are afraid of soiling 
 your fingers, hold them up with the tongs ; they reduce all 
 characteristic varieties of writing to one form of blank 
 identity, and that the very vilest form of scribbling which 
 exists in Europe — viz. to the wooden scratch (as if traced 
 with a skewer) universally prevailing amongst French peo- 
 ple. Vainly would Aldorisius apply his famous art (viz. 
 the art of deciphering a man's character from handwriting) 
 to the villainous scrawls which issue from this modern 
 laboratory of pseudo-caligraphy. All pupils under these 
 systems write alike; the predestined thief is confounded 
 with the patriot or martyr; the innocent young girl with 
 the old hag that watches country waggons for victims. In 
 the same indistinguishable character, so far as this reform- 
 
 1 Chas. Rollin, ' De la maniere d'enseigner et etudier les belles-lettres ' 
 (Paris, 1726) ; R. Rapin,' Reflexions sur la poetique d' Aristote ' (Paris, 1713) ; 
 'Reflexions sur 1' eloquence' (1672) (not to be confounded, as by Prof. 
 Masson, De Quincey's Works, Vol. X., p. 192, with Rapin-Thoyras) ; Chas. 
 Batteux, ' Les quatres poetiques ' (Paris, 1771) ; ' Les beaux-arts reduits a 
 une meme principe ' (Paris, 1746) ; D. Bouhours, ' De la maniere de bien 
 penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit ' (Paris, 1687) ; J.-B. Dubos, ' Reflexions 
 critiques sur la poesie et sur la peinture ' (Paris, 1719) . 
 
 2 Hugh Blair, 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres ' (Edinb. 1783). 
 
74 Style. 
 
 ing process is concerned, would Joseph Hume sign a motion 
 for retrenching three half-crowns per annum from the 
 orphan daughter of a man who had died in battle, and Queen 
 Adelaide write a subscription towards a fresh church for 
 carrying on war, from generation to generation, upon sin and 
 misery. 
 
 57. Now, if a mechanic system of training for style would 
 have the same levelling effects as these false caligraphies, 
 better by far that we should retain our old ignorance. If 
 art is to terminate in a killing monotony, welcome the old 
 condition of inartificial simplicity! So say you, reader; ay, 
 but so say we. This does not touch us : the mechanism we 
 speak of will apply to no meritorious qualities of style, hut 
 to its faults, and, above all, to its awkwardness ; in fact, to 
 all that now constitutes the friction of style, the needless 
 joltings and retardations of our fluent motion. 1 As to the 
 motion itself in all that is positive in its derivation, in its 
 exciting impulses, in its speed, and its characteristic vari- 
 eties, it will remain unaffected. The modes of human feel- 
 ing are inexhaustible ; the forms by which feeling connects 
 itself with thought are indefeasibly natural; the channels 
 through which both impress themselves upon language are 
 infinite. All these are imperturbable by human art; they 
 are past the reach of mechanism; you might as well be 
 afraid that some steam-engine — Atlas, suppose, or Samson 
 (whom the Germans call Simpson) — should perfidiously 
 hook himself to the earth's axis, and run away with us to 
 Jupiter. Let Simpson do his worst; we defy him. And 
 so of style : in that sense under which we all have an inter- 
 est in its free movements it will for ever remain free. It 
 will defy art to control it. In that sense under which it 
 ever can be mechanized we have all an interest in wishing 
 that it should be so. Our final object therefore is a meri- 
 
 i Cf. the simile of the machine in Spencer's ' Philosophy of Style,' which 
 appeared eleven years after the publication of De Quincey's essay. 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 75 
 
 torious one, with no intermixture of evil. This being 
 explained, and our course onwards having been mapped out, 
 let us now proceed with our work, first recapitulating in 
 direct juxtaposition with each other the points of our future 
 movement : — 1. Greek and Latin Literature we shall touch 
 on only for the sake of appraising or deducing the sort of 
 ideas which they had upon the subject of style. It will 
 appear that these ideas were insufficient. At the best they 
 were tentative. 2. From them, however, may be derived a 
 hint, a dim suggestion, of the true question in arrear ; and, 
 universally, that goes a great way towards the true answer. 
 " Dimidium facti," says the Roman proverb, "qui bene ccepit, 
 habet " : to have made a good beginning is one half of the 
 work. Prudens interrogatio, says a wise modern, — to have 
 shaped your question skilfully, — as, in that sense, and with 
 a view to the answer, a good beginning. 3. Having laid this 
 foundation towards an answer, we shall then attempt the 
 answer itself. 4. After which, — that is, after removing to 
 the best of our power such difficulties to the higher under- 
 standing as beset the subject of style, rhetoric, composition, 
 — having (if we do not greatly delude ourselves) removed 
 the one great bar to a right theory of style, or a practical 
 discipline of style, — we shall leave to some future work of 
 more suitable dimensions the filling up of our outline. Our- 
 selves we shall confine to such instant suggestions — prac- 
 tical, popular, broadly intelligible — as require no extensive 
 preparation to introduce them on the author's part; no 
 serious effort to understand them on the reader's. What- 
 ever is more than this will better suit with the variable and 
 elastic proportions of a separate book than with the more 
 rigid proportions of a miscellaneous journal. 
 
76 Style. 
 
 ii. Tendency of Intellectual Power to gather in Clusters. 
 
 58. Coming back, then, for hasty purposes, to Greek 
 Literature, we wish to direct the reader's eye upon a 
 remarkable phenomenon in the history of that literature, 
 and subsequently of all human genius ; not so remarkable 
 but that multitudes must have noticed it, and yet remark- 
 able enough to task a man's ingenuity in accounting for it. 
 The earliest known occasion on which this phenomenon drew 
 a direct and strong gaze upon itself was in a little historical 
 sketch composed by a Roman officer during the very open- 
 ing era of Christianity. We speak of the Historia Romana, 
 written and published about the very year of the crucifixion 
 by Velleius Paterculus, in the court of Tiberius Caesar, the 
 introduction to which presents us with a very interesting 
 outline of general history. The style is sometimes clumsy 
 and unwieldy, but nervous, masculine, and such as became a 
 soldier. In higher qualities, in thoughtfulness, and the 
 spirit of finer observation, it is far beyond the standard of 
 a mere soldier ; and it shows, in common with many other 
 indications lying on the face of Eoman society at that era, 
 how profoundly the great struggles that had recently con- 
 vulsed the world must have terminated in that effect which 
 followed in the wake of the French Revolution, — viz. in a 
 vast stimulation to the meditative faculties of man. The 
 agitation, the frenzy, the sorrow of the times, reacted upon 
 the human intellect, and forced men into meditation. Their 
 own nature was held up before them in a sterner form. 
 They were compelled to contemplate an ideal of man far 
 more colossal than is brought forward in the tranquil aspects 
 of society ; and they were often engaged, whether they would 
 or not, with the elementary problems of social philosophy. 
 Mere danger forced a man into thoughts which else were 
 foreign to his habits. Mere necessity of action forced him 
 to decide. Such changes went along with the Reformation; 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 77 
 
 such changes went along with the French Revolution ; such 
 changes went along with the great recasting of Roman soci- 
 ety under the two earliest Caesars. In every page of Pater- 
 culus we read the swell and agitation of waters subsiding 
 from a deluge. Though a small book, it is tumid with rev- 
 olutionary life. And some thing also is due, no doubt, to the 
 example of the mighty leader in the Roman Revolution, to 
 the intellectual and literary tastes diffused by him — 
 
 " The foremost man of all this world " — 
 
 who had first shown the possibility of uniting the military 
 leader's truncheon with the most brilliant stylus of the 
 rhetorician. How wonderful and pleasing to find such 
 accomplishments of accurate knowledge, comprehensive 
 reading and study, combined with so searching an intellect, 
 in a man situated as Paterculus, reared amongst camps, 
 amidst the hurry of forced marches, and under the priva- 
 tions of solitary outposts! The old race of hirsute cen- 
 turions how changed, how perfectly regenerated, by the 
 influence of three Caesars in succession applying a paternal 
 encouragement to Literature ! 
 
 59. Admiring this man so much, we have paused to review 
 the position in which he stood. Now, recurring to that 
 remark (amongst so many original remarks) by which, in 
 particular, he connects himself with our subject, we may 
 venture to say that, if it were a very just remark for his 
 experience, it is far more so for ours. What he remarked, 
 what he founded upon a review of two nations and two 
 literatures, we may now countersign by an experience of 
 eight or nine. His remark was upon the tendency of intel- 
 lectual power to gather in clusters, — its unaccountable 
 propensity (he thought it such) to form into separate insu- 
 lated groups. This tendency he illustrates first in two 
 cases of Grecian literature. Perhaps that might have been 
 an insufficient basis for a general theory. But it occurred 
 
78 Style. 
 
 to Paterculus in confirmation of his doctrine that the very- 
 same tendency had reappeared in his native literature. The 
 same phenomenon had manifested itself, and more than 
 once, in the history of Roman intellect; the same strong 
 nisus of great wits to gather and crystallize about a com- 
 mon nucleus. That marked gregariousness in human gen- 
 ius had taken place amongst the poets and orators of Eome 
 which had previously taken place amongst the poets, orators, 
 and artists of Greece. What importance was attached by 
 Paterculus to this interesting remark, what stress he laid 
 upon its appreciation by the reader, is evident from the 
 emphatic manner in which he introduces it, as well as from 
 the conscious disturbance of the symmetry which he incurs 
 rather than suppress it. These are his words : l — " Not- 
 ' withstanding that this section of my work has consider- 
 ' ably outrun the proportions of that model which I had laid 
 ' down for my guidance, and although perfectly aware that, 
 'in circumstances of hurry so unrelenting, which, like a 
 'revolving wheel or the eddy of rapid waters, allows me no 
 ' respite or pause, I am summoned rather to omit what is 
 ' necessary than to court what is redundant : still, I cannot 
 'prevail on myself to forbear from uttering and giving a 
 'pointed expression to a thought which I have often re- 
 ' volved in my mind, but to this hour have not been able sat- 
 ' isfactorily to account for in theory (nequeo tamen tempemre 
 'mihi quin rem scepe agitatam animo meo, neque ad liquidum 
 "ratione perductam, signem stylo)." Having thus bespoke 
 the reader's special attention, the writer goes on to ask if 
 any man can sufficiently wonder on observing that eminent 
 genius in almost every mode of its development (eminentis- 
 sima cujusque professionis ingenia) had gathered itself into 
 the same narrow ring-fence of a single generation. Intel- 
 lects that in each several department of genius were capable 
 of distinguished execution (cujusque clari operis capacia 
 
 i 'Hist. Rom.,' I. xvi. 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 79 
 
 ingenia) had sequestrated themselves from the great stream 
 and succession of their fellow-men into a close insulated 
 community of time, and into a corresponding stage of pro- 
 ficiency measured on their several scales of merit * (in si- 
 militudinem et temporum et profectuum semetipsa ab aliis 
 separaverunt) . Without giving all the exemplifications by 
 which Paterculus has supported this thesis, we shall cite 
 two : Una (neque multorum annorum spatio divisa) cetas per 
 divini spiritus viros, JEschylum, Sophoclem, Euripidem, illus- 
 travit Tragcediam. 2 Not that this trinity of poets was so 
 contemporary as brothers are; but they were contemporary 
 as youthful uncles in relation to elderly nephews : ^Eschylus 
 was viewed as a senior by Sophocles, Sophocles by Eurip- 
 ides ; but all might by possibility have met together (what 
 a constellation !) at the same table. Again, says Paterculus, 
 Quid ante Isocratem, quid post ejus auditores, clarum in 
 oratoribus fuit? Nothing of any distinction in oratory before 
 Isocrates, nothing after his personal audience. So confined 
 was that orbit within which the perfection of Greek tragedy, 
 within which the perfection of Greek eloquence, revolved. 
 The same law, the same strong tendency, he insists, is 
 illustrated in the different schools of Greek comedy, and 
 again of Greek philosophy. Nay, it is more extensively 
 illustrated amongst Greek artists in general: Hoc idem 
 
 1 Paterculus, it must be remembered, was composing a peculiar form of 
 history, and, therefore, under a peculiar law of composition. It was de- 
 signed for a rapid survey of many ages within a very narrow compass, and 
 unavoidably pitched its scale of abstraction very high. This justified a 
 rhetorical, almost a poetic, form of expression; for in such a mode of 
 writing, whether a writer seeks that effect or not, the abrupt and almost 
 lyrical transitions, the startling leaps over vast gulfs of time and action, 
 already have the effect of impassioned composition. Hence, by an instinct, 
 he becomes rhetorical: and the natural character of his rhetoric, its 
 pointed condensation, often makes him obscure at first sight. We, there- 
 fore, for the merely English reader, have a little expanded or at least 
 brought out his meaning. But, for the Latin reader, who will enjoy his 
 elliptical energy, we have sometimes added the original words. — De Q. 
 
 2 Tragoidias in the original. 
 
80 Style. 
 
 evenisse grammaticis, plastis, pictoribus, scalptoribus, quisquis 
 temporum institerit notis reperiet. 
 
 60. From Greece Paterculus translates the question to his 
 own country in the following pointed manner : summing up 
 the whole doctrine, and re-affirming it in a form almost 
 startling and questionable by its rigour: " Adeo arctatum 
 angustiis temporum," so punctually concentrated was all 
 merit within the closest limits of time, " ut nemo memoria 
 dignus alter ab altero videri nequiverint " : no man of any 
 consideration but he might have had ocular cognisance of 
 all others in his own field who attained to distinction. He 
 adds : " Neque hoc in Grrncis quam in Romania evenit magis." 
 
 61. His illustrations from the Roman Literature we do 
 not mean to follow : one only, as requisite for our purpose, 
 we cite : — " Oratio, ac vis forensis, perfectumque L prosm elo- 
 quential decus 2 {pace P. Crassi et Gracchorum dixerim) ita 
 universa sub principe operis sui erupit Tullio ut 3 mirari nemir 
 nem possis nisi aut ab illo visum aut qui ilium viderit." This 
 is said with epigrammatic point: the perfection of prose 
 and the brilliancy of style as an artificial accomplishment, 
 was so identified with Cicero's generation that no distin- 
 guished artist, none whom you could greatly admire, but 
 might be called his contemporary : none so much his senior 
 but Cicero might have seen Mm; none so much his junior 
 but he might have seen Cicero. It is true that Crassus, in 
 Cicero's infancy, and the two Gracchi, in the infancy of 
 Crassus (neither of whom, therefore, could have been seen 
 by Cicero), were memorably potent as orators, — in fact, 
 for tragical results to themselves (which, by the way, was 
 the universal destiny of great Roman orators) ; and nobody 
 was more sensible of their majestic pretensions, merely as 
 
 1 Perfectumqvx in the later editions, including Masson's. 
 
 2 The words ut idem reparetur Cato, which occur at this point in the 
 original, are omitted by De Quincey. 
 
 8 Supply delectari ante eum paucissimis at this point, and vera alter 
 mirari. 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 81 
 
 orators, than Cicero himself, who has accordingly made 
 Crassus and Antony predominant speakers in his splendid 
 dialogues De Oratore. But they were merely demoniac 
 powers, not artists. And, with respect to these early 
 orators (as also with respect to some others, whose names we 
 have omitted), Paterculus has made a special reservation. 
 So that he had not at all overlooked the claims of these 
 great men; but he did not feel that any real exception to 
 his general law was created by orators who were indeed 
 wild organs of party rage or popular frenzy, but who wil- 
 fully disdained to connect themselves with the refinements 
 of literature. Such orators did not regard themselves as 
 intellectual, but as political, powers. Confining himself to 
 oratory, and to the perfection of prose composition, written 
 or spoken, in the sense of great literary accomplishments, 
 beginning in natural power but perfected by art, Paterculus 
 stands to his assertion that this mode of human genius had so 
 crowded its development within the brief circuit of Cicero's 
 life (threescore years and three) as that the total series of 
 Roman Orators formed a sort of circle, centring in that 
 supreme orator's person, such as in modern times we might 
 call an electrical circle, — each link of the chain having been 
 either electrified by Cicero or having electrified him. Sen- 
 eca, with great modesty, repeats the very same assertion 
 in other words : " Quicquid Romana facundia habuit quod 
 insolenti Grcecioz aut opponat aut prceferat circa Ciceronem 
 effloiuit." A most ingenuous and self-forgetting homage in 
 him; for a nobler master of thinking than himself Paganism 
 has not to show, nor, when the cant of criticism has done 
 its worst, a more brilliant master of composition. And, 
 were his rule construed literally, it would exclude the two 
 Plinys, the two Senecas, Tacitus, Quintilian, and others, 
 from the matricula of Roman eloquence. Not one of these 
 men could have seen Cicero ; all were divided by more than 
 one generation; and yet, most unquestionably, though all 
 
82 Style. 
 
 were too reasonable to have fancied themselves any match 
 for the almighty orator in public speaking, not one but was 
 an equally accomplished artist in written composition, and 
 under a law of artificial style far more difficult to manage. 
 62. However, with the proper allowances for too unmodi- 
 fied a form of expression, we must allow that the singular 
 phenomenon first noticed by Paterculus, as connecting itself 
 with the manifestations of human genius, is sufficiently 
 established by so much of human history as even he had 
 witnessed. For, if it should be alleged that political 
 changes accounted for the extinction of oral eloquence con- 
 currently with the death of Cicero, still there are cases 
 more than enough even in the poetry of both Greece and 
 Rome, to say nothing of the arts, which bear out the gen- 
 eral fact of human genius coming forward by insulated 
 groups and clusters ; or, if Pagan ages had left that point 
 doubtful, we have since witnessed Christian repetitions 
 of the truth on the very widest scale. The Italian age of 
 Leo X., in the fifteenth century, the French age of Louis 
 XIV., in the seventeenth century, the German age commenc- 
 ing with Kant, Wieland, Goethe, in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries, all illustrate the tendency to these 
 intermitting paroxysms of intellectual energy. The light- 
 ning and the storm seem to have made the circuit of the 
 whole European heavens, to have formed vortices succes- 
 sively in every civilised land, and to have discharged them- 
 selves by turns from every quarter of the atmosphere. In 
 our own country there have been three such gatherings of 
 intellectual power: 1st, The age of Shakspere, Spenser, 
 and the great school of dramatists that were already dying 
 out in the latter days of Ben Jonson (1636), and were 
 finally extinguished by the great civil commotions begin- 
 ning in 1642 ; 2dty, The age of Queen Anne and George I. ; 
 Bdly, The age commencing with Cowper, partially roused 
 perhaps by the American War, and afterwards so power- 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 83 
 
 fully stimulated (as was the corresponding era of Kant and 
 Wieland), by the French Revolution. This last volcanic 
 eruption of the British genius has displayed enormous 
 power and splendour. Let malice and the base detraction 
 of contemporary jealousy say what it will, greater origi- 
 nality of genius, more expansive variety of talent, never 
 was exhibited than in our own country since the year 1793. 
 Every mode of excellence, except only dramatic excellence 
 (in which we have nothing modern to place by the side of 
 Schiller's Walleustein), has been revealed in dazzling lustre. 
 And he that denies it, may he be suffocated by his own 
 bilious envy! 
 
 63. But the point upon which we wish to fix the reader's 
 attention in citing this interesting observation of the 
 Roman officer, and the reason for which we have cited it at 
 all, is not so much for the mere fact of these spring-tides 
 occurring in the manifestations of human genius, inter- 
 mitting pulses (so to speak) in human energies, as the 
 psychological peculiarity which seems to affect the cycle of 
 their recurrences. Paterculus occupies himself chiefly with 
 the causes of such phenomena; and one main cause he sug- 
 gests as lying in the emulation which possesses men when 
 once a specific direction has been impressed upon the public 
 competitions. This no doubt is one of the causes. But a 
 more powerful cause perhaps lies in a principle of union 
 than in any principle of division amongst men, — viz. in 
 the principle of sympathy. The great Italian painters, for 
 instance, were doubtless evoked in such crowds by the 
 action of this principle. To hear the buzz of idolizing 
 admiration settling for years upon particular works of art 
 and artists kindles something better than merely the ambi- 
 tion and rivalship of men; it kindles feelings happier and 
 more favourable to excellence, viz. genial love and com- 
 prehension of the qualities fitted to stir so profound and 
 lasting an emotion. This contagion of sympathy runs 
 
84 Style. 
 
 electrically through society, searches high and low for 
 congenial powers, and suffers none to lurk unknown to the 
 possessor. A vortex is created which draws into its suction 
 whatever is liable to a similar action. But, not to linger 
 upon this question of causes, what we wish to place under 
 the reader's eye is rather the peculiar type which belongs 
 to these revolutions of national intellect, according to the 
 place which each occupies in the order of succession. 
 Possibly it would seem an over-refinement if we were to 
 suggest that the odd terms in the series indicate creative 
 energies, and the even terms reflective energies; and we 
 are far enough from affecting the honours of any puerile 
 hypothesis. But, in a general way, it seems plausible 
 and reasonable that there will be alternating successions 
 of power in the first place, and next of reaction upon that 
 power from the reflective faculties. It does seem natural 
 that first of all should blossom the energies of creative 
 power, and in the next era of the literature, when the con- 
 sciousness has been brightened to its own agencies, will be 
 likely to come forward the re-agencies of the national mind 
 on what it has created. The period of meditation will 
 succeed to the period of production. Or, if the energies of 
 creation are again partially awake, finding themselves 
 forestalled as regards the grander passions, they will be 
 likely to settle upon the feebler elements of manners. 
 Social differences will now fix the attention by way of sub- 
 stitute for the bolder differences of nature. Should a third 
 period, after the swing of the pendulum through an arch 
 of centuries, succeed for the manifestation of the national 
 genius, it is possible that the long interval since the inau- 
 gural era of creative art will have so changed all the ele- 
 ments of society and the aspects of life as to restore the 
 mind to much of its infant freedom; it may no longer feel 
 the captivity of an imitative spirit in dealing with the very 
 same class of creations as exercised its earliest powers. 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 85 
 
 The original national genius may now come forward in 
 perfectly new forms without the. sense of oppression from 
 inimitable models. The hoar of ages may have withdrawn 
 some of these models from active competition. And thus 
 it may not be impossible that oscillations between the crea- 
 tive and reflective energies of the mind might go on through 
 a cycle of many ages. 1 
 
 64. In our own literature we see this scheme of oscilla- 
 tions illustrated. In the Shakspere period we see the 
 fulness of life and the enormity of power throwing up a 
 tropical exuberance of vegetation. A century afterwards 
 we see a generation of men lavishly endowed with genius, 
 but partly degraded by the injurious training of a most 
 profligate era growing out of great revolutionary convul- 
 sions, and partly lowered in the tone of their aspirations 
 by a despair of rivalling the great creations of their prede- 
 cessors. We see them universally acquiescing in humbler 
 modes of ambition; showing sometimes a corresponding 
 merit to that of their greatest forefathers, but merit (if 
 sometimes equal) yet equal upon a lower scale. Thirdly, 
 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we see a new 
 birth of original genius, of which it is not lawful to affirm 
 any absolute inferiority even by comparison with the 
 Shaksperian age of Titans. For whatsoever is strictly 
 and thoroughly original, being sui generis, cannot be better 
 or worse than any other model of excellence which is also 
 original. One animal structure compared with another 
 of a different class is equally good and perfect. One valley 
 which is no copy of another, but has a separate and pecul- 
 iar beauty, cannot be compared for any purpose of disad- 
 
 1 For discussions of the principles of literary evolution, see Brunetiere, 
 ' Involution des genres dans l'histoire de la litte'rature,' I., pp. 1-31 ; Pos- 
 nett, 'Comparative Literature'; L. Stephen, 'History of Thought in the 
 Eighteenth Century,' Vol. I., pp. 1-19; Symonds, ' Essays Speculative and 
 Suggestive,' Vol. I., pp. 1-83; Carriere, ' Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der 
 Culturent wickelung. ' 
 
86 Style. 
 
 vantage with another. One poem which is composed upon 
 a law of its own, and has a characteristic or separate beauty 
 of its own, cannot be inferior to any other poem whatso- 
 ever. The class, the order, may be inferior; the scale may 
 be a lower one ; but the individual work, the degree of merit 
 marked upon the scale must be equal, if only the poem is 
 equally original. In all such cases understand, ye misera- 
 ble snarlers at contemporary merit, that the puerile gout de 
 comparaison (as La Bruyere calls it) is out of place; univer- 
 sally you cannot affirm any imparity where the ground is 
 preoccupied by disparity. Where there is no parity of 
 principle there is no basis for comparison. 
 
 iii. The Two Great Periods of Grecian Literature. 
 
 65. Now, passing, with the benefit of these explanations, 
 to Grecian Literature, we may observe that there were in 
 that field of human intellect no more than two develop- 
 ments of power from first to last. And, perhaps, the 
 unlearned reader (for it is to the praise and honour of a 
 powerful journal that it has the unlearned equally with the 
 learned amongst its readers) will thank us for here giving 
 him, in a very few words, such an account of the Grecian 
 Literature in its periods of manifestation, and in the rela- 
 tions existing between these periods, that he shall not 
 easily forget them. 
 
 66. There were, in illustration of the Roman aide-de- 
 camp's 1 doctrine, two groups or clusters of Grecian wits, 
 
 i " The Roman aide-de-camp's" : — Excuse, reader, this modern phrase: 
 by what other is it possible to express the relation to Tiberius, and the mil- 
 itary office about his person, which Paterculus held on the German fron- 
 tier ? In the 104th chapter of his second book he says — ' ' Hoc tempus me, 
 functum ante tribunatu castrorum, Tib. Cxsaris militem fecit "; which in 
 our version is — " This epoch placed me, who had previously discharged the 
 duties of camp-marshal, upon the staff of Caesar." And he goes on to say 
 that, having been made a brigadier-general of cavalry (alse prsefectus) under 
 
Epochs of G-reek Literature. 87 
 
 two depositions or stratifications of the national genius; 
 and these were about a century apart. What makes them 
 specially rememberable is the fact that each of these bril- 
 liant clusters had gathered separately about that man as 
 central pivot who, even apart from this relation to the 
 literature, was otherwise the leading spirit of his age. It 
 is important for our purpose — it will be interesting, even 
 without that purpose, for the reader — to notice the distin- 
 guishing character or marks by which the two clusters are 
 separately recognised; the marks both personal and chron- 
 ological. As to the personal distinctions, we have said 
 that in each case severally the two men who offered the 
 nucleus to the gathering happened to be otherwise the 
 most eminent and splendid men of the period. Who were 
 they? The one was Peeicles, the other was Alexander 
 op Macedon. Except Themistocles, who may be ranked as 
 senior to Pericles by just one generation (or thirty-three 
 years), 1 in the whole deduction of Grecian annals no other 
 
 a commission which dated from the very day of Caesar's adoption into the 
 Imperial house and the prospect of succession, — so that the two acts of 
 grace ran concurrently, — thenceforwards " per annos continuos IX praef ec- 
 tus ant legatus, spectator, et pro captu mediocritatis mete adjutor, fui"; 
 or, as I beg to translate, " through a period of nine consecutive years from 
 this date, I acted either as military lieutenant to Caesar, or as ministerial 
 secretary" (such we hold to be the true virtual equivalent of prsefectus ; 
 i.e. speaking fully, of prsefectus prsetorio), " acting simultaneously as in- 
 spector of the public works " (bridges and vast fortifications on the north- 
 east German frontier), " and (to the best capacity of my slender faculties) 
 as his personal aide-de-camp." Possibly the reader may choose to give a 
 less confined or professional meaning to the word adjutor. But, in apology, 
 we must suggest two cautions to him : 1st, That elsewhere Paterculus does 
 certainly apply the term as a military designation, bearing a known tech- 
 nical meaning ; and, 2d, That this word adjutor, in other non-military uses, 
 as for instance on the stage, had none but a technical meaning. — De Q. 
 
 1 This is too much to allow for a generation in those days, when the 
 average duration of life was much less than at present ; but, as an exceed- 
 ingly convenient allowance (since thrice 33J is just equal to a century) , it 
 may be allowedly used in all cases not directly bearing on technical ques- 
 tions of civil economy. Meantime, as we love to suppose ourselves in all 
 
88 Style. 
 
 public man, statesman, captain-general, administrator of 
 the national resources, can be mentioned as approaching to 
 these two men in splendour of reputation, or even in real 
 merit. Pisistratus was too far back; Alcibiades, who 
 might (chronologically speaking) have been the son of 
 Pericles, was too unsteady and (according to Mr. Coleridge's 
 coinage) "unreliable," or, perhaps in more correct Eng- 
 lish, too " unrelyuponable." 1 
 
 67. Thus far our purpose prospers. No man can pre- 
 tend to forget two such centres as Pericles for the elder 
 group, or Alexander of Macedon (the "strong he-goat" of 
 Jewish prophecy) for the junior. Round these two foci, 
 in two different but adjacent centuries, gathered the total 
 
 cases as speaking virginibus puerisque, — who, though reading no man's 
 paper throughout, may yet often read a page or a paragraph of every 
 man's, — we, for the chance of catching their eye in a case where they may 
 really gain in two minutes an ineradicable conspectus of the Greek Litera- 
 ture (and for the sake of ignorant people universally, whose interests we 
 hold sacred), add a brief explanation of what is meant by a generation. 
 Is it meant or imagined that in so narrow a compass as 33 years + 4 months 
 the whole population of a city, or a people, could have died off ? By no 
 means: not under the lowest value of human life. "What is meant is— 
 that a number equal to the whole population will have died : not X, the 
 actual population, but a number equal to X. Suppose the population of 
 Paris 900,000. Then, in the time allowed for one generation, 900,000 will 
 have died : but then, to make up that number, there will be 300,000 fur- 
 nished, not by the people now existing, but by the people who will be born 
 in the course of the 33 years. And thus the balloting for death falls only 
 upon two out of three whom at first sight it appears to hit. It falls not 
 exclusively upon X, but upon X + Y : this latter quantity Y being a quan- 
 tity flowing concurrently with the lapse of the generation. Obvious as 
 this explanation is, and almost childish, to every man who has even a tinct- 
 ure of political arithmetic, it is so far from being generally obvious that, 
 out of every thousand who will be interested in learning the earliest revo- 
 lutions of literature, there will not be as many as ten who will know, even 
 conjecturally, what is meant by a generation. Besides infinite other blun- 
 ders and equivocations, many use an age and a generation as synonymous, 
 whilst by siecle the French uniformly mean a century. — De Q. 
 
 1 See, for the history and standing of the word reliable, Fitzedward 
 Hall's ' On English Adjectives in -able, with special reference to Reliable' 
 (Lond., 1877). 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 89 
 
 starry heavens — the galaxy, the Pantheon — of Grecian 
 intellect. All that Greece produced of awful solemnity in 
 her tragic stage, of riotous mirth and fancy in her comic 
 stage, of power in her eloquence, of wisdom in her philoso- 
 phy; all that has since tingled in the ears of twenty -four 
 centuries of her prosperity in the arts, her sculpture, her 
 architecture, her painting, her music ; everything, in short, 
 excepting only her higher mathematics, which waited for a 
 further development which required the incubation of the 
 musing intellect for yet another century, revolved like two 
 neighbouring planetary systems about these two solar orbs. 
 Two mighty vortices, Pericles and Alexander the Great, 
 drew into strong eddies about themselves all the glory and 
 the pomp of Greek literature, Greek eloquence, Greek wis- 
 dom, Greek art. Next, that we may still more severely 
 search the relations in all points between the two systems, 
 let us assign the chronological locus of each, because that 
 will furnish another element towards the exact distribution 
 of the chart representing the motion and the oscillations 
 of human genius. Pericles had a very long administra- 
 tion. He was Prime Minister of Athens for upwards of 
 one entire generation. He died in the year 429 before 
 Christ, and in a very early stage of that great Peloponnesian 
 War which was the one sole intestine war for Greece, affect- 
 ing every nook and angle in the land. Now, in this long 
 public life of Pericles, we are at liberty to fix on any year 
 as his chronological locus. On good reasons,. not called for 
 in this place, we fix on the year 444 before Christ. This 
 is too remarkable to be forgotten. Four, four, four, what 
 at some games of cards is called a "prial " (we presume, 
 by an elision of the first vowel a, for parial), forms an era 
 which no man can forget. It was the fifteenth year before 
 the death of Pericles, and not far from the bisecting year 
 of his political life. Now, passing to the other system, 
 the locus of Alexander is quite as remarkable, as little 
 
90 Style. 
 
 liable to be forgotten when once indicated, and more easily- 
 determined, because selected from a narrower range of 
 choice. The exact chronological locus of Alexander the 
 Great is 333 years before Christ. Everybody knows how- 
 brief was the career of this great man : it terminated in the 
 year 320 before Christ. But the annus mirabilis of his 
 public life, the most effective and productive year through- 
 out his oriental anabasis, was the year 333 before Christ. 
 Here we have another "prial," a prial of threes, for the 
 locus of Alexander, if properly corrected. 
 
 68. Thus far the elements are settled, the chronological 
 longitude and latitude of the two great planetary systems 
 into which the Greek Literature breaks up and distributes 
 itself: 444 and 333 are the two central years for the two 
 systems; allowing, therefore, an interspace of 111 years 
 between the foci of each. It is thought by some people that 
 all those stars which you see glittering so restlessly on a keen 
 frosty night in a high latitude, and which seem to have been 
 sown broadcast with as much carelessness as grain lies on a 
 threshing-floor, — here showing vast zaarrahs of desert blue 
 sky, there again lying close and to some eyes presenting 
 
 " The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest," — 
 
 are in fact all gathered into zones or strata ; that our own 
 wicked little earth (with the whole of our peculiar solar 
 system) is a part of such a zone, and that all this perfect 
 geometry of the heavens, these radii in the mighty wheel, 
 would become apparent if we, the spectators, could but sur- 
 vey it from the true centre, — which centre may be far too 
 distant for any vision of man, naked or armed, to reach. 
 However that may be, it is most instructive to see how many 
 apparent scenes of confusion break up into orderly arrange- 
 ment when you are able to apply an a priori principle of 
 organization to their seeming chaos. The two vortices of 
 the Greek Literature are now separated; the chronological 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 91 
 
 loci of their centres are settled. And next we request the 
 reader thoughtfully to consider who they are of whom the 
 elder system is composed. 
 
 69. In the centre, as we have already explained, is Peri- 
 cles, the great practical statesman, and that orator of whom 
 (amongst so many that vibrated thunderbolts) it was said 
 peculiarly that he thundered and lightened as if he held 
 this Jovian attribute by some individual title. We spare 
 you Milton's magnificent description from the Paradise 
 Regained 1 of such an orator "wielding at will that fierce 
 democracy," partly because the closing line in its refer- 
 ence to "Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne," too much 
 points the homage to Demosthenes, but still more because 
 by too trivial a repetition of splendid passages a serious 
 injury is done to great poets. Passages of great musical 
 effect, metrical bravuras, are absolutely vulgarized by too 
 perpetual a parroting; and the care of Augustus Caesar ne 
 nomen suum obsolefieret, 2 that the majesty of his name should 
 
 1 The lines are perhaps not so familiar to readers of the present day as 
 they were to those of De Quincey's generation : 
 
 " Thence to the famous Orators repair, 
 Those ancient whose resistless eloquence 
 Wielded at will that fierce democraty, 
 Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece 
 To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne." P. Ji., iv., 11. 267-271. 
 
 2 The oddest feature in so odd a business was that Augustus committed 
 this castigation of bad poets to the police; but whence the police were 
 to draw the skill for distinguishing between good poets and bad is not 
 explained. The poets must have found their weak minds somewhat aston- 
 ished by the sentences of these reviewers — sitting like our Justices in 
 Quarter Sessions, and deciding perhaps very much in the same terms; 
 treating an Ode, if it were too martial, as a breach of the peace ; directing 
 an Epic poet to find security for his good behaviour during the next two 
 years ; and, for the writers of Epithalamia on imperial marriages, ordering 
 them " to be privately whipped and discharged." The whole affair is the 
 more singular as coming from one who carried his civilitas, or show of 
 popular manners, even to affectation. Power, without the invidious exte- 
 rior of power, was the object of his life. Ovid seems to have noticed his 
 inconsistency in this instance by reminding him that even Jupiter did not 
 disdain to furnish a theme for panegyric. — De Q. 
 
92 Style. 
 
 not be vulgarized by bad poets, is more seriously needed in 
 our days on behalf of great poets, to protect them from 
 trivial or too parrot -like a citation. 
 
 70. Passing onwards from Pericles, you find that all the 
 rest in his system were men in the highest sense creative, 
 absolutely setting the very first examples, each in his pe- 
 culiar walk of composition; themselves without previous 
 models, and yet destined every man of them to become 
 models for all after-generations ; themselves without fathers 
 or mothers, and yet having all posterity for their children. 
 First come the three men divini spiritus, under a heavenly 
 afflatus, iEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, the creators of 
 Tragedy out of a village mummery; next comes Aristoph- 
 anes, who breathed the breath of life into Comedy; then 
 comes the great philosopher, Anaxagoras, who first theor- 
 ised successfully upon man and the world. Next come, 
 whether great or not, the still more famous philosophers, 
 Socrates, Plato, Xenophon; then comes, leaning .upon Peri- 
 cles, as sometimes Pericles leaned upon him, the divine 
 artist, Phidias x ; and behind this immortal man walk He- 
 rodotus and Thucydides. What a procession to Eleusis 
 would these men have formed ! what a frieze, if some great 
 artist could arrange it as dramatically as Chaucer has 
 arranged the Pilgrimage to Canterbury ! 
 
 71. It will be granted that this is unmasking a pretty 
 strong battery of great guns for the Athens of Pericles. 
 Now, let us step on a hundred years forward. We are now 
 within hail of Alexander ; and a brilliant consistory of 
 Grecian men that is by which he is surrounded. There are 
 now exquisite masters of the more refined comedy; there 
 
 1 "Phidias ": — That he was as much of a creative power as the rest of 
 his great contemporaries, that he did not merely take up or pursue a career 
 already opened by others, is pretty clear from the state of Athens, and of 
 the forty marble quarries which he began to lay under contribution. The 
 quarries were previously unopened ; the city was as yet without architect- 
 ural splendour. — De Q. 
 
Epochs of Q-reek Literature. 93 
 
 are, again, great philosophers, for all the great schools are 
 represented by able successors ; and, above all others, there 
 is the one philosopher who played with men's minds 
 (according to Lord Bacon's comparison) as freely as ever 
 his princely pupil with their persons — there is Aristotle. 
 There are great orators, and, above all others, there is that 
 orator whom succeeding generations (wisely or not) have 
 adopted as the representative name for what is conceivable 
 in oratorical perfection — there is Demosthenes. Aristotle 
 and Demosthenes are in themselves bulwarks of power; 
 many hosts lie in those two names. For artists, again, to 
 range against Phidias, there is Lysippus the sculptor, and 
 there is Apelles the painter ; for great captains and masters 
 of strategic art, there is Alexander himself, with a glitter- 
 ing cortege of general officers, well qualified to wear the 
 crowns which they will win, and to head the dynasties 
 which they will found. Historians there are now, as in that 
 former age ; and, upon the whole, it cannot be denied that 
 the " turnout " is showy and imposing. 
 
 iv. Isocrates the Connecting Link. 
 
 72. Before coming to that point, — that is, before compar- 
 ing the second " deposit " (geologically speaking) of Grecian 
 genius with the first, — let us consider what it was (if any- 
 thing) that connected them. Here, reader, we would wish 
 to put a question. Saving your presence, Did you ever see 
 what is called a dumb-bell? We have; and know it by 
 more painful evidence than that of sight. 
 
 73. You, therefore, reader ! if personally cognisant of 
 dumb-bells, we will remind, — if not, we will inform, — 
 that it is a cylindrical bar of iron or lead issuing at each 
 end in a globe of the same metal, and usually it is sheathed 
 in green baize; but, perfidiously so, if that covering is 
 meant to deny or to conceal the fact of those heart-rending 
 
94 Style. 
 
 thumps which it inflicts upon one's too confiding fingers 
 every third ictus. By the way, we have a vague remem- 
 brance that the late Mr. Thnrtell, the same who was gener- 
 ally censured for murdering the late Mr. Weare, once in a 
 dark lobby attempted to murder a friend by means of a 
 dumb-bell; in which he showed his judgment,— we mean in 
 his choice of tools, — for otherwise, in attempting to murder 
 his friend, he was to blame. Now, reader, it is under this 
 image of the dumb-bell we couch an allegory. Those globes 
 at each end are the two systems or separate clusters of Greek 
 Literature ; and that cylinder which connects them is the 
 long man that ran into each system, binding the two 
 together. Who was that? It was Isocrates. Great we 
 cannot call him in conscience; and, therefore, by way of 
 compromise, we call him long, — which, in one sense, he 
 certainly was ; for he lived through f our-and-twenty Olym- 
 piads, each containing four solar years. He narrowly es- 
 caped being a hundred years old ; and, though that did not 
 carry him from centre to centre, yet, as each system might 
 be supposed to protend a radius each way of twenty years, he 
 had, in fact, a full personal cognisance (and pretty equally) 
 of the two systems, remote as they were, which composed 
 the total world of Grecian Genius. Two circumstances 
 have made this man interesting to all posterity; so that 
 people the most remote and different in character (Cicero, 
 for instance, and Milton) have taken a delight in his mem- 
 ory. One is, that the school of rhetoric in Athens, which 
 did not finally go down till the reign of Justinian, and 
 therefore lasted above 940 years without interruption, began 
 with him. He was, says Cicero, De Orat., 1 "pater elo- 
 quentise " ; and elsewhere he calls him " communis magister 
 oratorum." 2 True, he never practised himself, for which 
 
 i Bk. II., ch. 3. 
 
 2 Does this phrase occur in Cicero ? or is De Quincey quoting from mem- 
 ory magister istorum omnium (commonly regarded as an interpolation) 
 from ' De Oratore,' II. 22? 
 
Epochs of Q-reeh Literature. 95 
 
 lie had two reasons: "My lungs," he tells us himself, 1 "are 
 weak"; and, secondly, "I am naturally, as well as upon 
 principle, a coward." There he was right. A man would 
 never have seen twenty-four Olympiads who had gone about 
 brawling and giving "jaw" as Demosthenes and Cicero 
 did. You see what they made of it. The other feature of 
 interest in this long man is precisely that fact, viz. that he 
 was long. Everybody looks with kindness upon the snowy- 
 headed man who saw the young prince Alexander of Mace- 
 don within four years of his starting for Persia, and 
 personally knew most of those that gave lustre to the levees 
 of Pericles. Accordingly, it is for this quality of length 
 that Milton honours him with a touching memorial; for 
 Isocrates was "that old man eloquent" of Milton's sonnet 2 
 whom the battle of Chaeronea, " fatal to liberty, killed with 
 report." This battle, by which Philip overthrew the last 
 struggles of dying independence in Greece, occurred in the 
 year 338 before Christ. Philip was himself assassinated 
 two years later. Consequently, had Isocrates pulled out, 
 like caoutchouc or Indian rubber, a little longer, he might 
 have seen the silver shields, or Macedonian life-guards, 
 embarking for Persia. In less than five years from that 
 same battle, "fatal to liberty," Alexander was taking fatal 
 liberties with Persia, and "tickling the catastrophe" of 
 Darius. There were just seventy good years between the 
 two expeditions, — the Persian anabasis of Cyrus the 
 younger, and the Persian anabasis of Alexander; but 
 Isocrates knew personally many officers and savans s in 
 both. 
 
 i 'Panathenaikos,' XII. 10. 
 
 2 Sonnet X. ; 
 
 " As that dishonest victory 
 
 At Chseronea, fatal to liberty, 
 
 Killed with report that old man eloquent." 
 
 s " Officers and savans " : — Ctesias held the latter character, Xenophon 
 united both, in the earlier expedition. These were friends of Isocrates. 
 In the latter expedition, the difficulty would have been to And the man, 
 
96 Style. 
 
 74. Others, beside Cicero and Milton, have taken a deep 
 interest in Isocrates, — and, for the very circumstance -we 
 have been noticing, his length, combined with the accident 
 of position which made that length effective in connecting 
 the twofold literature of Greece. Had he been "long" 
 in any other situation than just in that dreary desert be- 
 tween the oasis of Pericles and the oasis of Alexander, 
 what good would that have done us ? "A wounded snake " 
 or an Alexandrine verse, that " drags its slow length along," 
 would have been as useful. But he, feeling himself wanted, 
 laid his length down like a railroad exactly where he could 
 be useful — with his positive pole towards Pericles and his 
 negative pole towards Alexander. Even Gibbon — even 
 the frosty Gibbon — condescends to be pleased with this 
 seasonable application of his two termini: "Our sense," 
 says he, in his 40th chapter, "of the dignity of human 
 nature is exalted 1 by the simple recollection that Isocrates 
 
 whether officer or savant, who was not the friend of Isocrates. Old age 
 such as his was a very rare thing in Greece ; a fact which is evident from 
 a Greek work surviving on the subject of Macrobiotics : few cases occur 
 beyond seventy. This accident, therefore, of longevity in Isocrates must 
 have made him already one of the standing lions in Athens for the last 
 twenty-six years of his life ; while, for the last seventy, his professorship 
 of rhetoric must have brought him into connexion with every great family 
 in Greece. One thing puzzles us, — what he did with his money : for he 
 must have made a great deal. He had two prices ; for he charged high to 
 those who could afford it; and why not? people are not to learn the art of 
 prating for nothing. Yet, being a teetotaller and a coward, how could lie 
 spend his money ? That question is vexatious. However, this one possi- 
 bility in the long man's life will for ever make him interesting: he might 
 have seen, and it is even possible that he did see Xenophon dismount from 
 some horse which he had stolen at Trebizond on his return from the Cyrus 
 expedition ; and he might also have seen Alexander mount for Ohseronea. 
 Alexander was present at that battle, and personally joined in a charge of 
 cavalry. It is not impossible that he may have ridden Bucephalus. — De Q. 
 i "7s exalted": — The logic of Gibbon may seem rather cloudy. Why 
 should it exalt our sense of human dignity that Isocrates was the youthful 
 companion of Plato or Euripides and the aged companion of Demosthenes? 
 It ought, therefore, to be mentioned that, in the sentence preceding, he had 
 
Epochs of Q-reek Literature. 97 
 
 was the companion of Plato and Xenophon, — that he 
 assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the 
 first representations of the CEdipus of Sophocles and the 
 Iphigenia of Euripides." So far in relation to the upper 
 terminus of the long man; next, with reference to the 
 lower terminus, Gibbon goes on : " A.nd that his pupils, 
 iEschines and Demosthenes, contended for the crown of 
 patriotism in the presence of Aristotle, the master of The- 
 ophrastus, who taught at Athens with the founders of the 
 Stoic and Epicurean sects." 
 
 v. Gfreek Literature before Pericles and after Alexander. 
 
 75. Now then, reader, you have arrived at that station 
 from which you overlook the whole of Greek Literature, as 
 a few explanations will soon convince you. Where is 
 Homer, where is Hesiod ? you ask ; where is Pindar ? 
 Homer and Hesiod lived a thousand years B.C., or, by the 
 lowest computations, near nine hundred. Eor anything 
 that we know, they may have lived with Tubal Cain. At 
 all events, they belong to no power or agency that set in 
 motion the age of Pericles, or that operated on that age. 
 Pindar, again, was a solitary emanation of some unknown 
 influences at Thebes, more than five hundred years before 
 Christ. He may be referred to the same era as Pythagoras. 
 These are all that can be cited before Pericles. 
 
 spoken of Athens as a city that " condensed within the period of a single 
 life the genius of ages and millions." The condensation is the measure of 
 the dignity; and Isocrates, as the " single life " alluded to, is the measure 
 of the condensation. That is the logic. By the way, Gibbon ought always 
 to be cited by the chapter. The page and volume of course evanesce with 
 many forms of publication, whilst the chapter is always available ; and, in 
 the commonest form of twelve volumes, becomes useful in a second func- 
 tion, as a guide to the particular volume ; for six chapters, with hardly any 
 exception {if any) are thrown into each volume. Consequently, the 40th 
 chapter, standing in the seventh series of sixes, indicates the seventh 
 volume. — De Q. 
 
98 Style. 
 
 76. Next, for the ages after Alexander, it is certain that 
 Greece proper was so much broken in spirit by the loss of 
 her autonomy dating from that era as never again to have 
 rallied sufficiently to produce a single man of genius, — not 
 one solitary writer who acted as a power upon the national 
 mind. Callimachus was nobody, and not decidedly Grecian. 
 Theocritus, a man of real genius in a limited way, is a 
 Grecian in that sense only according to which an Anglo- 
 American is an Englishman. Besides that, one swallow 
 does not make a summer. Of any other writers, above all 
 others of Menander, apparently a man of divine genius, we 
 possess only a few wrecks; and of Anacreon, who must 
 have been a poet of original power, we do not certainly 
 know that we have even any wrecks. Of those which pass 
 under his name, not merely the authorship, but the era, is 
 very questionable indeed. Plutarch and Lucian, the un- 
 learned reader must understand, both belong to pos£-Chris- 
 tian ages. And, for all the Greek emigrants who may have 
 written histories, such as we now value for their matter 
 more than for their execution, one and all they belong too 
 much to Roman civilisation that we should ever think of 
 connecting them with native Greek literature^ Polybius 
 
 * Excepting fragmentary writers, — Sappho and Simonides, and the 
 contributors to the Greek Anthologies (which, however, next after the 
 scenic literature, offer the most interesting expressions of Greek household 
 feeling), — we are not aware of having omitted in this rapid review any 
 one name that could be fancied to he a weighty name, excepting that of 
 Lyeophron. Of him we will say a word or two : — The work by which he 
 is known is a monologue or dramatic scene from the mouth of one single 
 speaker ; this speaker is Cassandra the prophetic daughter of Priam. In 
 about 1500 Iambic lines (the average length of a Greek tragedy) she pours 
 forth a dark prophecy with respect to all the heroes engaged in the Trojan 
 War, typifying their various unhappy catastrophes by symbolic images 
 which should naturally be intelligible enough to us who know their several 
 histories, but which (from the particular selection of accidents or circum- 
 stances used for the designation of the persons) read like riddles without 
 the aid of a commentator. This prophetic gloom, and the impassioned 
 character of the many woes arising notoriously to the conquerors as well 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 99 
 
 in the days of the second Scipio, Dion Cassius and Appian 
 in the acme of Eoman civility, are no more Grecian authors 
 because they wrote in Greek than the Emperor Marcus 
 Antoninus, or Julian, were other than Romans because, 
 from monstrous coxcombry, they chose to write in Greek 
 their barren memoranda. As well might Gibbon be thought 
 not an Englishman, or Leibnitz not a German, because the 
 former, in composing the first draft of his essay on litera- 
 ture, and the latter in composing his Theodicde, used the 
 French language. The motive in all these cases was anal- 
 ogous : amongst the Greek writers it was the affectation of 
 reaching a particular body of educated men, a learned class, 
 to the exclusion of the uninstructed multitude. With the 
 affectors of Ereneh the wish was to reach a particular body 
 of thinkers, 1 with whose feelings they had a special sym- 
 pathy from personal habituation of their society, and to 
 whose prejudices, literary or philosophic, they had adapted 
 their train of argument. 
 
 77. No; the Greek Literature ends at the point we have 
 fixed, viz. with the era of Alexander. !N~o power, no heart- 
 subduing agency, was ever again incarnated in any book, 
 system of philosophy, or other model of creative energy, 
 growing upon Grecian soil or from Grecian roots. Crea- 
 tion was extinct; the volcano was burnt out. What books 
 
 as the conquered in the sequel of the memorable war, give a colouring of 
 dark power to the Cassandra of Lycophron. Else we confess to the fact 
 of not having been much impressed by the poem. We read it in the year 
 1809, having been told that it was the most difficult book in the Greek 
 language. This is the popular impression, but a very false one. It is not 
 difficult at all as respects the language (allowing for a few peculiar Lyco- 
 phrontic words) ; the difficulty lies in the allusions, which are intentionally 
 obscure. Lycophron did as we now do in eclipses — he smoked the glass 
 through which he gazed. — De Q. 
 
 1 "At Lausanne I composed the first chapters of my essay in French, 
 the familiar language of my conversation and studies, in which it was 
 easier for me to write than in my mother-tongue. . . . My true motive was 
 doubtless the ambition of new and singular fame, an Englishman claiming 
 a place among the writers of France " (Gibbon's ' Memoirs,' p. 92) . 
 
100 Style. 
 
 appeared at scattered intervals during the three centuries 
 still remaining before the Christian era lie under a re- 
 proach, pretty general, which perhaps has not been per- 
 ceived. From the titles and passing notices of their 
 objects, or mode of dealing with their objects, such as we 
 derive from Cicero and many others, it is evident that they 
 were merely professional books, text-books for lectures 
 addressed to students, or polemic works addressed to com- 
 petitors. Chairs of Ehetoric and Philosophy had now been 
 founded in Athens. A great University, the resort of 
 students from all nations, was established, and, in a sense 
 sufficient to insure the perpetual succession of these cor- 
 porate bodies, was endowed. Books, therefore, and labour- 
 ing with the same two opposite defects as are unjustly 
 charged upon the schoolmen of the middle ages, — viz. 
 dulness from absolute monotony, and visionariness from 
 the aerial texture of the speculations, — continued to be 
 written in discharge of professional obligations, or in pur- 
 suit of professional interest. The summum bonum was 
 discussed until it had become the capital affliction of 
 human patience, the summum malum of human life. 
 Beyond these there was no literature; and these products 
 of dreaming indolence, which terminated in making the 
 very name of Greek philosopher and Greek rhetorician 
 a jest and byword amongst the manlier Romans, no more 
 constituted a literature than a succession of academic 
 studies from the pupils of a royal institution can consti- 
 tute a school of fine art. 
 
 78. Here, therefore, at this era of Alexander, 333 B.C., 
 — when every Greek patriot had reason to say of his native 
 literature " Venimus ad summum fortunes," We have seen 
 the best of our days, — we must look for the Greek ideas of 
 style, and the Greek theories of composition, in the utter- 
 most development that either could have received. In the 
 earlier system of Greek intellectual strength, in the era of 
 
Epochs of Greek Literature. 101 
 
 Pericles, the powers of style would be most comprehen- 
 sively exercised. In the second system, in the era of 
 Alexander, the light of conscious recognition and direct 
 examination would be most effectually applied. The first 
 age furnished the power; the second furnished the science. 
 The first brought the concrete model, the second brought 
 the abstracting skill ; and between them the whole compass 
 of Greek speculation upon this point would be brought to 
 a focus. Such being the state of preparation, what was 
 the result ? 
 
PART IV. 
 
 STYLE AND PUBLICATION. 
 
 i. Features of Greek Literature favorable to the Development 
 of a Theory of Style. 
 
 79. "Such being the state of preparation, what was the 
 result ? " These words concluded our last essay. There 
 had been two manifestations or bright epiphanies of the 
 Grecian intellect, revelations in two separate forms: the 
 first having gathered about Pericles in the year 444 B.C., 
 the second about Alexander the Great in 333 b.c. ; the first 
 being a pure literature of creative power, the second in a 
 great measure of reflective power; the first fitted to call 
 out the differences of style, the second to observe, classify, 
 and discuss them. Under these circumstances of favoura- 
 ble preparation, what had been the result ? Where style 
 exists in strong colouring as a practice or art, we reasonably 
 expect that style should soon follow as a theory, as a science 
 explaining that art, tracing its varieties, and teaching its 
 rules. To use ancient distinctions, where the "rhetorica 
 utens " has been cultivated with eminent success (as in 
 early Greece it had) it is but natural to expect many conse- 
 quent attempts at a "rhetorica docens." And especially it 
 is natural to do so in a case where the theorizing intellect 
 had been powerfully awakened. What, therefore, we ask 
 again, had been in fact the result ? 
 
 80. We must acknowledge that it had fallen far below 
 the reasonable standard of our expectations. Greece, it is 
 
 102 
 
Style and Publication. 103 
 
 true, produced a long series of works on rhetoric, many of 
 which, though not easily met with, 1 survive to this day; 
 and one which stands first in order of time, viz. the great 
 work of Aristotle, is of such distinguished merit that some 
 eminent moderns have not scrupled to rank it as the 
 very foremost legacy in point of psychological knowledge 
 which Pagan Literature has bequeathed to us. Without 
 entering upon so large a comparison as that, we readily 
 admit the commanding talent which this work displays. 
 But it is under an equivocal use of the word " rhetoric " 
 that the Rhetoric of Aristotle could ever have been classed 
 with books treating of style. There is in fact a complex 
 distinction to which the word Rhetoric is liable. 1st, it 
 means the rhetorica utens, as when we praise the rhetoric of 
 Seneca or Sir Thomas Browne, not meaning anything which 
 they taught, but something which they practised, — not a 
 doctrine which they delivered, but a machinery of composi- 
 tion which they employed. 2dly, it means the rhetorica 
 docens, as when we praise the Rhetoric of Aristotle or 
 Hermogenes, writers far enough from being rhetorical by 
 their own style of writing, but writers who professedly 
 taught others to be rhetorical. 3dly, the rhetorica utens 
 
 y "Not easily met with": — From Germany we have seen reprints of 
 some eight or nine ; hut once only, so far as our bibliography extends, were 
 the whole body published collectively. This was at the Aldine press in 
 Venice more than three centuries ago. Such an interval, and so solitary a 
 publication, sufficiently explain the non-familiarity of modern scholars 
 with this section of Greek Literature. — De Q. 
 
 For critical accounts of these early treatises the following works may 
 be consulted : L. Spengel, ' Studium der Rhetorik bei den Alten,' ' Artium 
 Scriptores,' and the article ' Definition und Eintheilung der Rhetorik bei 
 den Alten' in Rheinisches Museum XVIII. 481-526; R. Volkmann, 'Die 
 Rhetorik der Grieehen and Romer,' and 'Hermagoras oder Elemente der 
 Rhetorik ' ; E. Egger, * Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs ' ; A.-Ed. 
 Chaignet, ' La Rhetorique et son histoire ' ; E. M. Cope, ' Introd. to Aris- 
 totle's Rhetoric,' p. 1-i, 27-36; E. Gros, ' Etude sur la Rhetorique chez les 
 Grecs ' ; Chas. Benoit, ' Essai historique sur les premiers manuels d'inven- 
 tion oratoire jusqu'a Aristote.' 
 
104 Style. 
 
 itself is subdivided into two meanings, so wide apart that 
 they have very little bearing on each other: one being 
 applied to the art of persuasion, the dexterous use of plausi- 
 ble topics for recommending any opinion whatever to the 
 favour of an audience (this is the Grecian sense univer- 
 sally) ; the other being applied to the art of composition, 
 the art of treating any subject ornamentally, gracefully, 
 affectingly. There is another use of the word rhetoric dis- 
 tinct from all these, and hitherto, we believe, not con- 
 sciously noticed; of which at some other time. 1 
 
 81. Now, this last subdivision of the word rhetoric, viz. 
 " Rhetoric considered as a practising art, rhetor ica utens," — 
 which is the sense exclusively indicated by our modern use 
 of the term, — is not at all concerned in the Rhetoric of 
 Aristotle. It is rhetoric as a mode of moral suasion, as a 
 technical system for obtaining a readiness in giving to the 
 false a colouring of plausibility, to the doubtful a colouring 
 of probability, or in giving to the true, when it happens to 
 be obscure, the benefit of a convincing exposition, — this it 
 is which Aristotle undertakes to teach, and not at all the 
 art of ornamental composition. 2 In fact, it is the whole 
 body of public extempore speakers whom he addresses, not 
 the body of deliberate writers in any section whatever. 
 And, therefore, whilst conceding readily all the honour 
 which is claimed for that great man's Rhetoric, by this one 
 distinction as to what it was that he meant by Rhetoric, we 
 evade at once all necessity for modifying our general prop- 
 osition, — viz. that style in our modern sense, as a theory of 
 composition, as an art of constructing sentences and weav- 
 
 1 Cf. the essay on ' Rhetoric,' §§ 1-3 and 11. 
 
 2 " Strict justice indeed, if applicable to Rhetoric, would confine itself 
 to seeking such a delivery as would cause neither pain nor pleasure " (Rhet- 
 oric, III. 1) . Aristotle holds that some slight attention to style is desirable 
 because manner of presentation affects lucidity of statement, but thinks 
 the point is of no great consequence, and calls attention to the fact that in 
 the teaching of geometry it is altogether disregarded. 
 
Style and Publication. 105 
 
 ing them into coherent wholes, was not effectually cultivated 
 amongst the Greeks. It was not so well understood, nor so 
 distinctly contemplated in the light of a separate accom- 
 plishment, as afterwards among the Romans. And we 
 repeat that this result from circumstances prima facie so 
 favourable to the very opposite result is highly remarkable. 
 It is so remarkable that we shall beg permission to linger a 
 little upon those features in the Greek Literature which 
 most of all might seem to have warranted our expecting from 
 Greece the very consummation of this delicate art. For 
 these same features, which would separately have justified 
 that expectation, may happen, when taken in combination 
 with others, to account for its disappointment. 
 
 82. There is, then, amongst the earliest phenomena of 
 the Greek Literature, and during its very inaugural period, 
 one which of itself and singly furnishes a presumption for 
 expecting an exquisite investigation of style. It lies in the 
 fact that two out of the three great tragic poets carried his 
 own characteristic quality of style to a morbid excess, — to 
 such an excess as should force itself, and in fact did force 
 itself, into popular notice. Had these poets all alike 
 exhibited that sustained and equable tenor of tragic style 
 which we find in Sophocles, it is not probable that the vul- 
 gar attention would have been fixed by its character. Where 
 a standard of splendour is much raised, provided all parts 
 are simultaneously raised on the same uniform scale, we 
 know by repeated experience in many modes of display, 
 whether in dress, in architecture, in the embellishment of 
 rooms, &c, that this raising of the standard is not perceived 
 with much vivacity, and that the feelings of the spectator 
 are soon reconciled to alterations that are harmonized. It 
 is always by some want of uniformity, some defect in fol- 
 lowing out the scale, that we become roused to conscious 
 observation of the difference between this and our former 
 standards. We exaggerate these differences in such a case 
 
106 Style. 
 
 as much as we undervalue them, in a case where all is 
 symmetrical. We might expect, therefore, beforehand, that 
 the opposite characteristics as to style of iEschylus and 
 Euripides would force themselves upon the notice of the 
 Athenian populace; and, in fact, we learn from the Greek 
 scholiasts on these poets that this effect did really follow. 
 These scholiasts, indeed, belong to a later age. But we 
 know by traditions which they have preserved, and we know 
 from Aristotle himself, 1 the immediate successor of the 
 great tragic poets (indirectly we know also from the stormy 
 ridicule of Aristophanes, 2 who may be viewed as contem- 
 porary with those poets), that ./Eschylus was notorious to a 
 proverb amongst the very mob for the stateliness, pomp, 
 and towering character of his diction, whilst Euripides was 
 equally notorious not merely for a diction in a lower key, 
 more household, more natural, less elaborate, but also for 
 cultivating such a diction by study and deliberate prefer- 
 ence. Having such great models of contrasting style to 
 begin with, having the attention converged upon these differ- 
 ences by the furious merriment of Aristophanes, less than 
 a Grecian wit would have felt a challenge in all this to the 
 investigation of style, as a great organ of difference between 
 man and man, between poet and poet. 
 
 83. But there was a more enduring reason in the cir- 
 cumstances of Greece for entitling us to expect from her the 
 perfect theory of style. It lay in those accidents of time 
 and place which obliged Greece to spin most of her specula- 
 
 1 See the Rhetoric, Bk. III., chap. 2, where Aristotle says that Euripides 
 was the first to make a practice of choosing words from the language of 
 common life. Cf. with this passage, however, the following from the 
 ' Poetics,' xxi. 7 : " iEsehylus and Euripides wrote the same line, which by 
 Euripides' changing but one word, and using a strange term instead of an 
 ordinary and usual one, appears beautiful instead of poor." 
 
 2 In ' The Frogs.' See Egger's interesting chapter, ' De l'influence exercee 
 par la satire comique sur les poetes qu'elle attaquait ' (' Hist, de la Crit.,' 
 p. 82). 
 
Style and Publication. 107 
 
 tions, like a spider, out of Iter own bowels. Now, for such, 
 a kind of literature style is, generally speaking, paramount ; 
 for a literature less self-evolved style is more liable to 
 neglect. Modern nations have laboured under the very op- 
 posite disadvantage. The excess of external materials has 
 sometimes oppressed their creative power, and sometimes 
 their meditative power. The exuberance of objective knowl- 
 edge — that knowledge which carries the mind to materials 
 existing out of itself, such as natural philosophy, chemistry, 
 physiology, astronomy, geology, where the mind of the 
 student goes for little and the external object for much — 
 has had the effect of weaning men from subjective specula- 
 tion, where the mind is all in all and the alien object next 
 to nothing, and in that degree has weaned them from the 
 culture of style. Now, on the other hand, if you suppose a 
 man in the situation of Baron Trenck at Spandau, or Spinoza 
 in the situation of Robinson Crusoe at Juan Fernandez, or 
 a contemplative monk of the thirteenth century in his cell, 
 you will perceive that — unless he were a poor feeble- 
 minded creature like Cowper's Bastille prisoner, thrown by 
 utter want of energy upon counting the very nails of his 
 dungeon in all permutations and combinations — rather 
 than quit the external world, he must in his own defence, 
 were it only as a relief from gnawing thoughts, cultivate 
 some subjective science; that is, some branch of knowledge 
 which, drawing everything from the mind itself, is inde- 
 pendent of external resources. Such a science is found in 
 the relations of man to God, — that is in theology; in the 
 determinations of space, — that is in geometry; in the rela- 
 tions of existence or being universally to the human mind, 
 — otherwise called metaphysics or ontology; in the rela- 
 tions of the mind to itself, — otherwise called logic. Hence 
 it was that the scholastic philosophy evolved itself, like a 
 vast spider's loom, between the years 1100 and 1400. Men 
 shut up in solitude, with the education oftentimes of 
 
108 Style. 
 
 scholars, with a life of leisure, but with hardly any books, 
 and no means of observation, were absolutely forced, if they 
 would avoid lunacy from energies unoccupied with any 
 object, to create an object out of those very energies : they 
 were driven by mere pressure of solitude, and sometimes of 
 eternal silence, into raising vast aerial Jacob's ladders of 
 vapory metaphysics, just as endless as those meteorologic 
 phenomena which technically bear that name, just as sub- 
 lime and aspiring in their tendency upwards, and sometimes 
 (but not always) just as unsubstantial. In this present 
 world of the practical and the ponderable, we so little under- 
 stand or value such abstractions, though once our British 
 schoolmen took the lead in these subtleties, that we con- 
 found their very natures and names. Most people with us 
 mean by metaphysics what is properly called psychology. 
 Now, these two are so far from being the same thing that 
 the former could be pursued (and, to say the truth, was, in 
 fact, under Aristotle created) by the monk in his unfur- 
 nished cell, where nothing ever entered but moonbeams. 
 Whereas psychology is but in part a subjective science; in 
 some proportion it is also objective, depending on multiplied 
 experience, or on multiplied records of experience. Psychol- 
 ogy, therefore, could not have been cultivated extensively by 
 the schoolmen, and in fact would not have been cultivated at 
 all but for the precedent of Aristotle. He, who laid the 
 foundation of their metaphysics, which have nothing to do 
 with man, had also written a work on man, — viz. on the hu- 
 man soul, — besides other smaller works on particular psy- 
 chological phenomena (such as dreaming). Hence, through 
 mere imitation, arose the short sketches of psychology 
 amongst the schoolmen. Else their vocation lay to meta- 
 physics, as a science which can dance upon moonbeams ; and 
 that vocation arose entirely out of their circumstances,— 
 solitude, scholarship, and no books. Total extinction there 
 was for them of all objective materials, and therefore, as a 
 
Style and Publication. 109 
 
 consequence inevitable, reliance on the solitary energies of 
 their own minds. Like Christabel's chamber lamp, and the 
 angels from which it was suspended, all was the invention of 
 the unprompted artist, — 
 
 " AH made out of the carver's brain." 
 
 Models he had none before him, for printed books were yet 
 sleeping in futurity, and the gates of a grand asceticism 
 were closed upon the world of life. We moderns, indeed, 
 fancy that the necessities of the Romish Church — the mere 
 instincts of self -protection in Popery — were what offered 
 the bounty on this air-woven philosophy ; and partly that 
 is true ; but it is most certain that all the bounties in this 
 world would have failed to operate effectually, had they not 
 met with those circumstances in the silent life of mon- 
 asteries which favored the growth of such a self-spun 
 metaphysical divinity. Monastic life predisposed the rest- 
 lessness of human intellect to move in that direction. It 
 was one of the few directions compatible with solitude and 
 penury of books. It was the only one that opened an 
 avenue at once to novelty and to freedom of thought. Now, 
 then, precisely what the monastic life of the schoolmen was 
 in relation to Philosophy, the Greece of Pericles had been 
 in relation to Literature. What circumstances, what train- 
 ing, or predisposing influences existed for the monk in his 
 cell, the same (or such as were tantamount) existed for the 
 Grecian wit in the atmosphere of Athens. Three great 
 agencies were at work, and unconsciously moulding the 
 efforts of the earliest schoolmen about the opening of the 
 Crusades, and of the latest some time after their close ; — 
 three analogous agencies, the same in virtue, though varied 
 in circumstances, gave impulse and guidance to the men 
 of Greece, from Pericles, at the opening of Greek liter- 
 ature, to Alexander of Macedon, who witnessed its second 
 harvest. And these agencies were : — 1st, Leisure in excess, 
 
110 Style. 
 
 with a teeming intellect; the burden, under a new-born 
 excitement, of having nothing to do. 2d, Scarcity, without 
 an absolute famine, of books ; enough to awake the dormant 
 cravings, but not enough to gratify them without personal 
 participation in the labours of intellectual creation. 3d, A 
 revolutionary restlessness, produced by the recent estab- 
 lishment of a new and growing public interest. 
 
 84. The two first of these agencies for stimulating intel- 
 lects already roused by agitating changes are sufficiently 
 obvious ; though few perhaps are aware to what extent idle- 
 ness prevailed in Pagan Greece, and even in Eome, under 
 the system of household slavery, and under the bigoted 
 contempt of commerce. But, waiving that point, and for 
 the moment waiving also the degree of scarcity which 
 affected books at the era of Pericles, we must say one word 
 as to the two great analogous public interests which had 
 formed themselves separately, and with a sense of revolu- 
 tionary power, for the Greeks on the one hand, and for the 
 Schoolmen on the other. As respected the Grecians, and 
 especially the Athenians, this excitement lay in the senti- 
 ment of nationality which had been first powerfully organ- 
 ised by the Persian War. Previously to that war the 
 sentiment no doubt smouldered obscurely ; but the oriental 
 invasion it was which kindled it into a torrent of flame. 
 And it is interesting to remark that the very same cause 
 which fused and combined these scattered tribes into the 
 unity of Hellas, viz. their common interest in making head 
 against an awful invader, was also the cause which most of 
 all separated them into local parties by individual rivalship 
 and by characteristic services. The arrogant Spartan, mad 
 with a French-like self-glorification, boasted for ever of his 
 little Thermopylae. Ten years earlier the far sublimer dis- 
 play of Athenian Marathon, to say nothing of after-services 
 at Salamis or elsewhere, had placed Attica at the summit 
 of the Greek family. No matter whether selfish jealousy 
 
Style and Publication. Ill 
 
 would allow that pre-eminence to be recognised; doubtless 
 it was felt. With this civic pre-eminence arose concurrently 
 for Athens the development of an intellectual pre-eminence. 
 On this we need say nothing. But even here, although the 
 pre-eminence was too dazzling to have been at any time 
 overlooked, yet, with some injustice in every age to Athens, 
 her light has been recognised, but not what gave it value, 
 — the contrasting darkness of all around her. This did 
 not escape Paterculus, 1 whose understanding is always vigi- 
 lant. "We talk," says he, "of Grecian eloquence or 
 Grecian poetry, when we should say Attic; for who has 
 ever heard of Theban orators, of Lacedaemonian artists, or 
 Corinthian poets ? " 2 iEschylus, the first great author of 
 Athens (for Herodotus was not Athenian), personally fought 
 in the Persian War. Consequently the two modes of glory 
 for Athens were almost of simultaneous emergence. And 
 what we are now wishing to insist on is that precisely by 
 and through this great unifying event, viz. the double 
 inroad of Asia militant upon Greece, Greece first became 
 generally and reciprocally known to Greece herself; that 
 Greece was then first arranged and cast, as it were dramati- 
 cally, according to her capacities, services, duties; that a 
 general consciousness was then diffused of the prevailing 
 relations in which each political family stood to the rest; 
 
 1 Why should it escape him, when Cicero had made the same remark 
 years before ? The passage will be found in the ' Brutus,' chap. xiii. : "Hoc 
 autem studium non erat commune Graeciee, sed proprium Athenarum. Quis 
 enim aut Argivum oratorem, aut Corinthium, aut Thebanum scit fuisse 
 temporibus illis? " 
 
 2 People will here remind us that Aristotle was half a foreigner, being 
 born at Stagira in Macedon. Ay, but amongst Athenian emigrants, and of 
 an Athenian father ! His mother, we think, was Thracian. The crossing 
 of races almost uniformly terminates in producing splendour, at any rate 
 energy, of intellect. If the roll of great men, or at least of energetic men, 
 in Christendom were carefully examined, it would astonish us to observe 
 how many have been the children of mixed marriages, — i.e. of alliances 
 between two bloods as to nation, although the races might originally have 
 been the same. — De Q. 
 
112 Style. 
 
 and that in the leading states every intellectual citizen drew 
 a most agitating excitement from the particular character 
 of glory which had settled upon his own tribe, and the 
 particular station which had devolved upon it amongst the 
 champions of civilisation. 
 
 85. That was the positive force acting upon Athens. 
 Now, reverting to the monkish schoolmen, in order to com- 
 plete the parallel, what was the corresponding force acting 
 upon them? Leisure and want of books were accidents 
 common to both parties, — to the scholastic age and to the 
 age of Pericles. These were the negative forces, concurring 
 with others to sustain a movement once begun, but incapa- 
 ble of giving the original impulse. What was the active, 
 the affirmative, force which effected for the scholastic monks 
 that unity and sense of common purposes which had been 
 effected for the Greeks by the sudden development of a 
 Grecian interest opposed to a Persian, — of a civilised inter- 
 est, under sudden peril, opposed to the barbarism of the 
 universal planet? What was there, for the race of monkish 
 schoolmen labouring through three centuries, in the nature 
 of a known palpable interest, which could balance so grand 
 a principle of union and of effort as this acknowledged 
 guardianship of civilisation had suddenly unfolded, like 
 a banner, for the Greeks during the infancy of Pericles? 1 
 What could there be of corresponding grandeur? 
 
 86. Beforehand, this should have seemed impossible: 
 but, in reality, a far grander mode of interest had arisen 
 for the schoolmen: grander, because more indefinite; more 
 indefinite, because spiritual. It was this : — The Western 
 or Latin Church had slowly developed her earthly power. 
 As an edifice of civil greatness throughout the western 
 
 1 It is well to give unity to our grandest remembrances by connecting 
 them, as many as can be, with the same centre. Pericles died in the year 
 429 before Christ. Supposing his age to be fifty-six, he would then be born 
 about 485 B.C., — that is, five years after the first Persian invasion under 
 Darius, five years before the second under Xerxes. — -Db Q. 
 
Style and Publication. 113 
 
 world, she stood erect and towering. In the eleventh cen- 
 tury, beyond all others, she had settled her deep founda- 
 tions. The work thus far was complete; but blank civil 
 power, though indispensable, was the feeblest of her arms, 
 and, taken separately, was too frail to last, besides that it 
 was liable to revolutions. The authority by which chiefly 
 she ruled, had ruled, and hoped to rule, was spiritual ; and, 
 with the growing institutions of the age, embodying so much 
 of future resistance, it was essential that this spiritual 
 influence should be founded on a subtle philosophy, difficult 
 to learn, difficult to refute; as also that many dogmas 
 already established, such as tradition by way of prop to 
 infallibility, should receive a far ampler development. The 
 Latin Church, we must remember, was not yet that Church 
 of Papal Rome, in the maturity of its doctrines and its 
 pretensions, which it afterwards became. And, when we 
 consider how vast a benefactress this Church had been to 
 early Christendom when moulding and settling her founda- 
 tions, as also in what light she must have appeared to her 
 own pious children in centuries where as yet only the first 
 local breezes of opposition had begun to whisper amongst 
 the Albigenses, &c, we are bound in all candour to see that 
 a sublimer interest could not have existed for any series of 
 philosophers than the profound persuasion that by marry- 
 ing metaphysics to divinity, two sciences even separately 
 so grand, and by the pursuit of labyrinthine truth, they 
 were building up an edifice reaching to the heavens, — the 
 great spiritual fortress of the Catholic Church. 
 
 ii. Influence of Subjective Pursuits upon the Culture 
 of Style. 
 
 87. Here let us retrace the course of our speculations, 
 lest the reader should suppose us to be wandering. 
 
 88. First, for the sake of illustrating more vividly the 
 influences which acted on the Greece of Pericles, we bring 
 
114 Style. 
 
 forward another case analogously circumstanced, as moulded 
 by the same causes: — 1. The same condition of intellect 
 under revolutionary excitement; 2. The same penury of 
 books; 3. The same chilling gloom from the absence of 
 female charities, — the consequent reaction of that oppres- 
 sive ennui which Helvetius fancied, amongst all human 
 agencies, to be the most potent stimulant for the intellect; 
 4. The same (though far different) enthusiasm and elevation 
 of thought from disinterested participation in forwarding a 
 great movement of the age : for the one side involving the 
 glory of their own brilliant country and concurrent with 
 civilisation; for the other, co-extensive with all spiritual 
 truth and all spiritual power. 
 
 89. Next, we remark that men living permanently under 
 such influences must, of mere necessity, resort to that order 
 of intellectual pursuits which requires little aid ab extra, 
 — that order, in fact, which philosophically is called " sub- 
 jective," as drawing much from our own proper selves, or 
 little (if anything) from extraneous objects. 
 
 90. And then, thirdly, we remark that such pursuits are 
 peculiarly favourable to the culture of style. In fact they 
 force that culture. A man who has absolute facts to com- 
 municate from some branch of study external to himself, as 
 physiology, suppose, or anatomy, or astronomy, is careless 
 of style ; or at least he may be so, because he is independent 
 of style, for what he has to communicate neither readily ad- 
 mits, nor much needs, any graces in the mode of communi- 
 cation; the matter transcends and oppresses the manner. 
 The matter tells without any manner at all. But he who 
 has to treat .a vague question, such as Cicero calls a qucestio 
 infinita, where everything is to be finished out of his own 
 peculiar feelings, or his own way of viewing things (in con- 
 tradistinction to a qucestio finita, where determinate data from 
 without already furnish the main materials), soon finds that 
 the manner of treating it not only transcends the matter, but 
 
Style and Publication. 115 
 
 very often, and in a very great proportion, is the matter. 
 In very many subjective exercises of the mind, — as, for in- 
 stance, in that class of poetry which has been formally des- 
 ignated by this epithet (meditative poetry, we mean, in 
 opposition to the Homeric, which is intensely objective), the 
 problem before the writer is to project his own inner mind; 
 to bring out consciously what yet lurks by involution in 
 many unanalysed feelings ; in short, to pass through a prism 
 and radiate into distinct elements what previously had 
 been even to himself but dim and confused ideas intermixed 
 with each other. Now, in such cases, the skill with which 
 detention or conscious arrest is given to the evanescent, 
 external projection to what is internal, outline to what is 
 fluxionary, and body to what is vague, — all this depends 
 entirely on the command over language as the one sole 
 means of embodying ideas ; and in such cases the style, or, 
 in the largest sense, manner, is confluent with the matter. 
 But, at all events, even by those who are most impatient of 
 any subtleties, or what they consider " metaphysical " dis- 
 tinctions, thus much must be conceded: viz. that those who 
 rest upon external facts, tangible realities, and circumstan- 
 tial details, — in short, generally upon the objective, whether 
 in a case of narration or of argument, — must for ever be less 
 dependent upon style than those who have to draw upon 
 their own understandings and their own peculiar feelings 
 for the furniture and matter of their composition. A single 
 illustration will make this plain. It is an old remark, and, 
 in fact, a subject of continual experience, that lawyers fail 
 as public speakers in the House of Commons. Even Erskine, 
 the greatest of modern advocates, was nobody as a senator ; 
 and the "fluent Murray," two generations before him, had 
 found his fluency give way under that mode of trial. 1 But 
 
 1 According to Chesterfield, Murray ranked with Pitt as one of the first 
 speakers of his day. " They alone can influence or quiet the House: they 
 alone are attended to in that numerous and noisy assembly, that you might 
 
116 Style. 
 
 why? How was it possible that a man's fluency in one 
 chamber of public business should thus suddenly be defeated 
 and confounded in another? The reason is briefly expressed 
 in Cicero's distinction between a qucestio finita and a qucestio 
 infinita. In the courts of law, the orator was furnished 
 with a brief, an abstract of facts, downright statements 
 upon oath, circumstances of presumption, and, in short, a 
 whole volume of topics external to his own mind. Some- 
 times, it is true, the advocate would venture a little out to 
 sea proprio marte: in a case of crim. con., for instance, he 
 would attempt a little picture of domestic happiness drawn 
 from his own funds. But he was emboldened to do this 
 from his certain knowledge that in the facts of his brief he 
 had always a hasty retreat in case of any danger that he 
 should founder. If the little picture prospered, it was well: 
 if not, if symptoms of weariness began to arise in the audi- 
 ence, or of hesitation in himself, it was but to cut the matter 
 short, and return to the terra firma of his brief, when all 
 again was fluent motion. Besides that, each separate tran- 
 sition, and the distribution of the general subject, offered 
 themselves spontaneously in a law case ; the logic was given 
 as well as the method. Very often the mere order of chro- 
 nology dictated the succession and arrangement of the topics. 
 Now, on the other hand, in a House of Commons oration, 
 although sometimes there may occur statements of fact and 
 
 hear a pin fall while either of them is speaking." Walpole says of one 
 speech delivered in the House of Lords, that it was the only speech which 
 in his time had real effect. De Quincey probably had in mind the well- 
 known anecdote in Butler's ' Reminiscences,' describing Pitt's attack upon 
 Murray: "It was on this occasion that Pitt used an expression that was 
 once in every mouth. After Murray had suffered for some time [i.e. under 
 Pitt's onslaught] Pitt stopped, threw his eyes around, then, fixing their 
 whole power on Murray, said : ' I must now address a few words to Mr. 
 Solicitor: they shall be few, but they shall be daggers.' Murray was agi- 
 tated. The look was continued : the agitation increased. ' Judge Festus 
 trembles,' exclaimed Pitt; 'he shall hear me some other day.' He sat 
 down : Murray made no reply, and a languid debate is said to have shown 
 the paralysis of the House." 
 
Style and Publication. 117 
 
 operose calculations, still these are never more than a text, 
 at the very best, for the political discussion, but often no 
 more than a subsequent illustration or proof attached to 
 some one of its heads. The main staple of any long speech 
 must always be some general view of national policy ; and, 
 in Cicero's language, such a view must always be infinita; 
 that is, not determined ab extra, but shaped and drawn 
 from the funds of one's own understanding. The facts are 
 here subordinate and ministerial ; in the case before a jury 
 the facts are all in all. The forensic orator satisfies his 
 duty if he does but take the facts exactly as they stand in 
 his brief, and place them before his audience in that order, 
 and even (if he should choose it) in those words. The par- 
 liamentary orator has no opening for facts at all, but as he 
 himself may be able to create such an opening by some 
 previous expositions of doctrine or opinion, of the probable 
 or expedient. The one is always creeping along shore ; the 
 other is always out at sea. Accordingly, the degrees of 
 anxiety which severally affect the two cases are best 
 brought to the test in this one question- — " Wliat shall I say 
 next ?" — an anxiety besetting orators like that which besets 
 poor men in respect to their children's daily bread. " This 
 moment it is secured; but, alas for the next!" Now, the 
 judicial orator finds an instant relief: the very points of 
 the case are numbered; and, if he cannot find more to say 
 upon No. 7, he has only to pass on and call up No. 8. 
 Whereas the deliberative orator, in a senate or a literary 
 meeting, finds himself always in this situation, — 'that, 
 having reached with difficulty that topic which we have 
 supposed to be No. 7, one of three cases uniformly occurs : 
 either he does not perceive any No. 8 at all ; or, secondly, 
 he sees a distracting choice of No. 8's — the ideas to which 
 he might next pass are many, but he does not see whither 
 they will lead him; or, thirdly, he sees a very fair and 
 promising No. 8, but cannot in any way discover off-hand 
 
118 Style. 
 
 how he is to effect a transition to this new topic. He can- 
 not, with the rapidity requisite, modulate out of the one 
 key into the other. His anxiety increases, utter confusion 
 masters him, and he breaks down. 1 
 
 91. We have made this digression by way of seeking, 
 /in a well-known case of public life, an illustration of the 
 
 difference between a subjective and an objective exercise of 
 the mind. It is the sudden translation from the one exer- 
 cise to the other which, and which only, accounts for the 
 failure of advocates when attempting senatorial efforts. 
 Once used to depend on memorials or briefs of facts, or 
 of evidence not self -derived, the advocate, like a child in 
 leading-strings, loses that command over his own internal 
 resources which otherwise he might have drawn from prac- 
 tice. In fact, the advocate, with his brief lying before 
 him, is precisely in the condition of a parliamentary 
 speaker who places a written speech or notes for a speech 
 in his hat. This trick has sometimes been practised; and 
 the consternation which would befall the orator in the case 
 of such a hat-speech being suddenly blown away precisely 
 realizes the situation of a nisi prius orator when first getting 
 on his legs in the House of Commons. He has swum with 
 bladders all his life : suddenly he must swim without them. 
 
 92. This case explains why it is that all subjective 
 branches of study favour the cultivation of style. What- 
 soever is entirely independent of the mind, and external to 
 it, is generally equal to its own enunciation. Ponderable 
 facts and external realities are intelligible in almost any 
 language : they are self -explained and self -sustained. But, 
 
 The more closely any exercise of mind is connected with 
 what is internal and individual in the sensibilities, — that 
 is, with what is philosophically termed subjective, — pre- 
 cisely in that degree, and the more subtly, does the style 
 or the embodying of the thoughts cease to be a mere sep- 
 
 1 CI 'Literary Reminiscences,' chap. 13. 
 
Style and Publication. 119 
 
 arable ornament, and in fact the more does the manner, as 
 we expressed it before, become confluent with the matter^ 
 In saying this, we do but vary the form of what we once 
 heard delivered on this subject by Mr. Wordsworth. His 
 remark was by far the weightiest thing we ever heard on 
 the subject of style ; and it was this : that it- is in the high- 
 est degree unphilosophic to call language or diction " the 
 dress of thoughts." And what was it then that he would 
 substitute ? Why this : he would call it " the incarnation of 
 thoughts." Never in one word was so profound a truth 
 conveyed. Mr. Wordsworth was thinking, doubtless, of 
 poetry like his own : viz. that which is eminently medita- 
 tive. And the truth is apparent on consideration : for, if 
 language were merely a dress, then you could separate 
 the two ; you could lay the thoughts on the left hand, the 
 language on the right. But, generally speaking, you can 
 no more deal thus with poetic thoughts than you can with 
 soul and body. The union is too subtle, the intertexture 
 too ineffable, — each co-existing not merely with the other, 
 but each in and through the other. An image, for instance, 
 a single word, often enters into a thought as a constituent 
 part. In short, the two elements are not united as a body 
 with a separable dress, but as a mysterious incarnation. 
 And thus, in what proportion the thoughts are subjective, 
 in that same proportion does the very essence become iden- 
 tical with the expression, and the style become confluent 
 with the matter. 1 
 
 93. The Greeks, by want of books, philosophical instru- 
 ments, and innumerable other aids to all objective re- 
 searches, being thrown more exclusively than we upon their 
 own unaided minds, cultivated logic, ethics, metaphysics, 
 psychology, — all thoroughly subjective studies. The 
 schoolmen, in the very same situation, cultivated precisely 
 the same field of knevledge. The Greeks, indeed, added 
 1 Cf. essay on ' Language,' § 19. 
 
120 Style. 
 
 to their studies that of geometry; for the inscription over 
 the gate of the Academy (" Let no one enter who is not in- 
 structed in geometry ") sufficiently argues that this science 
 must have made some progress in the days of Pericles, when 
 it could thus be made a general qualification for admission 
 to a learned establishment within thirty years after his 
 death. But geometry is partly an objective, partly a sub- 
 jective, study. With this exception, the Greeks and the 
 Monastic Schoolmen trod the very same path. 
 
 94. Consequently, in agreement with our principle, both 
 ought to have found themselves in circumstances favoura- 
 ble to the cultivation of style. And it is certain that they 
 did. As an art, as a practice, it was felicitously pursued 
 in both cases. It is true that the harsh ascetic mode of 
 treating philosophy by the schoolmen generated a corre- 
 sponding barrenness, aridity, and repulsiveness, in the rigid 
 forms of their technical language. But, however offensive 
 to genial sensibilities, this diction was a perfect thing in 
 its kind; and, to do it justice, we ought rather to compare 
 it with the exquisite language of algebra, — equally irrec- 
 oncilable to all standards of aesthetic beauty; but yet, for 
 the three qualities of elliptical rapidity (that rapidity 
 which constitutes very much of what is meant by elegance in 
 mathematics), of absolute precision, and of simplicity, this 
 algebraic language is unrivalled amongst human inven- 
 tions. On the other hand, the Greeks, whose objects did 
 not confine them to these austere studies, carried out their 
 corresponding excellence in style upon a far wider, and 
 indeed a comprehensive, scale. Almost all modes of style 
 were exemplified amongst them. Thus we endeavour to 
 show that the subjective pursuits of the Greeks and the 
 Schoolmen ought to have favoured a command of appro- 
 priate diction; and afterwards that it did. 
 
 95. But, fourthly, we are entitled to expect that, wher- 
 ever style exists in great development as a practice, it will 
 
Style and Publication. 121 
 
 soon be investigated -with corresponding success as a 
 theory. If line music is produced spontaneously in short 
 snatches by the musical sensibility of a people, it is a 
 matter of certainty that the science of composition, that 
 counterpoint, that thorough-bass, will soon be cultivated 
 ■with a commensurate zeal. This is matter of such obvious 
 inference that in any case where it fails we look for some 
 extraordinary cause to account for it. Now, in Greece, 
 with respect to style, the inference did fail. Style, as an 
 art, was in a high state of culture ; style, as a science, was 
 nearly neglected. How is this to be accounted for ? It 
 arose naturally enough out of one great phenomenon in the 
 condition of ancient times, and the relation which that 
 bore to literature and to all human exertion of the intellect. 
 
 iii. The Idea of Publication. 
 96. Did the reader ever happen to reflect on the great 
 idea of publication f An idea we call it ; because even in 
 our own times, with all the mechanic aids of steam-presses, 
 &c, this object is most imperfectly approached, and is 
 destined, perhaps, for ever to remain an unattainable ideal, 
 — useful (like all ideals) in the way of regulating our 
 aims, but also as a practicable object not reconcilable with 
 the limitation of human power. For it is clear that, if 
 books were multiplied by a thousandfold, and truths of all 
 kinds were carried to the very fireside of every family, — 
 nay, placed below the eyes of every individual, — still the 
 purpose of any universal publication would be defeated and 
 utterly confounded, were it only by the limited opportuni- 
 ties of readers. One condition of publication defeats an- 
 other. Even so much as a general publication is a hopeless 
 idea. Yet, on the other hand, publication in some degree, 
 and by some mode, is a sine qua non condition for the 
 generation of literature. Without a larger sympathy than 
 that of his own personal circle, it is evident that no writer 
 
122 Style. 
 
 could have a motive for those exertions and previous prep- 
 arations without which excellence is not attainable in any 
 art whatsoever. 
 
 97. Now, in our own times, it is singular, and really philo- 
 sophically curious, to remark the utter blindness of writers, 
 readers, publishers, and all parties whatever interested in 
 literature, as to the trivial fraction of publicity which 
 settles upon each separate work. The very multiplication 
 of books has continually defeated the object in growing 
 progression. Readers have increased, the engines of pub- 
 lication have increased; but books, increasing in a still 
 greater proportion, have left as the practical result an 
 average quotient of publicity for each book, taken apart, 
 continually decreasing. And, if the whole world were 
 readers, probably the average publicity for each separate 
 work would reach a minimum; such would be the concur- 
 rent increase of books. But even this view of the case 
 keeps out of sight the most monstrous forms of this phe- 
 nomenon. The inequality of the publication has the effect 
 of keeping very many books absolutely without a reader. 
 The majority of books are never opened; five hundred 
 copies may be printed, or half as many more ; of these it 
 may happen that five are carelessly turned over. Popular 
 journals, again, which carry a promiscuous miscellany of 
 papers into the same number of hands, as a stage-coach 
 must convey all its passengers at the same rate of speed, 
 dupe the public with a notion that here at least all are 
 read. Not at all. One or two are read from the interest 
 attached to their subjects. Occasionally one is read a little 
 from the ability with which it treats a subject not other- 
 wise attractive. The rest have a better chance certainly 
 than books, because they are at any rate placed under the 
 eye and in the hand of readers. But this is no more than 
 a variety of the same case. A hasty glance may he taken 
 by one in a hundred at the less attractive papers ; but read- 
 
Style and Publication. 123 
 
 ing is out of the question. Then, again, another delusion, 
 by which all parties disguise the truth, is the absurd belief 
 that, not being read at present, a book may, however, be 
 revived hereafter. Believe it not! This is possible only 
 with regard to books that demand to be studied, where 
 the merit is slowly discovered. Every month, every day 
 indeed, produces its own novelties, with the additional zest 
 that they are novelties. Every future year, which will 
 assuredly fail in finding time for its own books, — how 
 should it find time for defunct books ? No, no ; every year 
 buries its own literature. Since Waterloo there have been 
 added upwards of fifty thousand books and pamphlets to 
 the shelves of our native literature, taking no account of 
 foreign importations. Of these fifty thousand possibly 
 two hundred still survive; possibly twenty will survive 
 for a couple of centuries ; possibly five or six thousand may 
 have been indifferently read; the rest not so much as 
 opened. In this hasty sketch of a calculation we assume 
 a single copy to represent a whole edition. But, in order 
 to have the total sum of copies numerically neglected since 
 Waterloo, it will be requisite to multiply forty-four thou- 
 sand by five hundred at the least, but probably by a higher 
 multiplier. At the very moment of writing this — by way 
 of putting into a brighter light the inconceivable blunder 
 as to publicity habitually committed by sensible men of 
 the world — let us mention what we now see before us in a 
 public journal. Speaking with disapprobation of a just 
 but disparaging expression applied to the French war-mania 
 by a London morning paper, the writer has described it as 
 likely to irritate the people of France. genius of arith- 
 metic! The offending London journal has a circulation of 
 four thousand copies daily; and it is assumed that thirty- 
 three millions, of whom assuredly not twenty-five indi- 
 viduals will ever see the English paper as a visible object, 
 nor five ever read the passage in question, are to be mad- 
 
124 Style. 
 
 dened by one word in a colossal paper laid this morning on 
 a table amongst fifty others, and to-morrow morning pushed 
 off that table by fifty others of more recent date. 1 How 
 are such delusions possible ? Simply from the previous 
 delusion, of ancient standing, connected with printed char- 
 acters : what is printed seems to every man invested with 
 some fatal character of publicity such as cannot belong to 
 mere MS. ; whilst, in the meantime, out of every thousand 
 printed pages, one at the most, but at all events a very 
 small proportion indeed, is in any true sense more public 
 when printed than previously as a manuscript; and that 
 one, even that thousandth part, perishes as effectually in 
 a few days to each separate reader as the words perish in 
 our daily conversation. Out of all that we talk, or hear 
 others talk, through the course of a year, how much 
 remains on the memory at the closing day of December? 
 Quite as little, we may be sure, survives from most people's 
 reading. A book answers its purpose by sustaining the 
 intellectual faculties in motion through the current act of 
 reading, and a general deposition or settling takes effect 
 from the sum of what we read; even that, however, chiefly 
 according to the previous condition in which the book 
 finds us for understanding it, and referring them to heads 
 under some existing arrangement of our knowledge. Pub- 
 lication is an idle term applied to what is not published; 
 and nothing is published which is not made known publicly 
 to the understanding as well as the eye; whereas, for the 
 enormous majority of what is printed, we cannot say so 
 much as that it is made known to the eyes. 
 
 98. For what reason have we insisted on this unpleasant 
 view of a phenomenon incident to the limitation of our 
 
 1 At the present time it is quite possible, and in fact of almost daily 
 occurrence, that a paragraph which appears one day in an English news- 
 paper, should, on the following day, be placed impressively before the eyes 
 of millions of people of all the leading nationalities. 
 
Style and Publication. 125 
 
 faculties, and apparently without remedy ? Upon another 
 occasion it might have been useful to do so, were it only to 
 impress upon every writer the vast importance of compres- 
 sion. Simply to retrench one word from each sentence, one 
 superfluous epithet, for example, would probably increase 
 the disposable time of the public by one twelfth part; in 
 other words, would add another month to the year, or raise 
 any sum of volumes read from eleven to twelve hundred. 
 A mechanic operation would effect that change ; but, by cul- 
 tivating a closer logic and more severe habits of thinking, 
 perhaps two sentences out of each three might be pruned 
 away, and the amount of possible publication might thus 
 be increased in a threefold degree. A most serious duty, 
 therefore, and a duty which is annually growing in solem- 
 nity, appears to be connected with the culture of an un- 
 wordy diction; much more, however, with the culture of 
 clear thinking, — that being the main key to good writing, 
 and consequently to fluent reading. 
 
 iv. Tlie Theatre and the Forum as Modes of Publication. 
 
 99. But all this, though not unconnected with our gen- 
 eral theme, is wide of our immediate purpose. The 
 course of our logic at this point runs in the following 
 order. The Athenians, from causes assigned, ought to 
 have consummated the whole science and theory of style. 
 But they did not. Why ? Simply from a remarkable 
 deflexion or bias given to their studies by a difficulty con- 
 nected with publication. For some modes of literature the 
 Greeks had a means of publication, for many they had not. 
 That one difference, as we shall show, disturbed the just 
 valuation of style. 
 
 100. Some mode of publication must have existed for 
 Athens: that is evident. The mere fact of a literature 
 proves it. For without public sympathy how can a litera- 
 
126 Style. 
 
 ture arise ? or public sympathy without a regular organ of 
 publication ? What poet would submit to the labours of 
 his most difficult art, if he had no reasonable prospect of a 
 large audience, and somewhat of a permanent audience, to 
 welcome and adopt his productions ? 
 
 101. Now then, in the Athens of Pericles, what was the 
 audience, how composed, and how insured, on which the 
 literary composer might rely ? By what channel, in short, 
 did the Athenian writer calculate on a publication ? This 
 is a very interesting question, and, as regards much in the 
 civilisation of Greece, both for what it caused and what it 
 prevented, is an important question. In the elder days, — 
 in fact we may suppose through the five hundred years 
 from the Trojan expedition to Pisistratus and Solon, — all 
 publication was effected through two classes of men: the 
 public reciters and the public singers. Thus, no doubt, it 
 was that the Iliad and Odyssey were sent down to the 
 hands of Pisistratus, who has the traditional reputation of 
 having first arranged and revised these poems. These 
 reciters or singers to the harp would probably rehearse one 
 entire book of the Iliad at every splendid banquet. Every 
 book would be kept in remembrance and currency by the 
 peculiar local relations of particular states or particular 
 families to ancestors connected with Troy. This mode of 
 publication, however, had the disadvantage that it was 
 among the arts ministerial to sensual enjoyment. And it 
 is some argument for the extensive diffusion of such a prac- 
 tice in the early times of Greece that, both in the Greece of 
 later times, and, by adoption from her, in the Rome of cul- 
 tivated ages, we find the aKpoafxara as commonly established 
 by way of a dinner appurtenance — that is, exercises of 
 display addressed to the ear, recitations of any kind with 
 and without music — not at all less frequently than opa/iara, 
 or the corresponding display to the eye (dances or combats 
 of gladiators). These were doubtless inheritances from 
 
Style and Publication. 127 
 
 the ancient usages of Greece, — modes of publication 
 resorted to long before tbe Olympic Games by the mere 
 necessitous cravings for sympathy, and kept up long after 
 that institution, as in itself too brief and rare in its recur- 
 rence to satisfy the necessity. 
 
 102. Such was the earliest effort of publication, and in 
 its feeble infancy ; for this, besides its limitation in point 
 of audience, was confined to narrative poetry. But, when 
 the ideal of Greece was more and more exalted by nearer 
 comparison with barbarous standards, after the sentiment 
 of patriotism had coalesced with vindictive sentiments, 
 and when towering cities began to reflect the grandeur of 
 this land as in a visual mirror, these cravings for publicity 
 became more restless and irrepressible. And at length, in 
 the time of Pericles, concurrently with the external mag- 
 nificence of the city, arose for Athens two modes of publi- 
 cation, each upon a scale of gigantic magnitude. 
 
 103. What were these ? The Theatre and the Agora l or 
 Forum : publication by the Stage, and publication by the 
 Hustings. These were the extraordinary modes of publi- 
 cation which arose for Athens : one by a sudden birth, like 
 that of Minerva, in the very generation of Pericles; the 
 other slowly maturing itself from the generation of Pisis- 
 tratus, which preceded that of Pericles by a hundred years. 
 This double publication, scenic and forensic, was virtually, 
 and for all the loftier purposes of publication, the press 
 of Athens. And, however imperfect a representative this 
 may seem of a typographical publication, certain it is that 
 in some important features the Athenian publication had 
 separate advantages of its own. It was a far more effect- 
 ive and correct publication in the first place, enjoying every 
 
 1 " Amongst the vicarious modes of publication resorted to by the An- 
 cients in default of the Printing-Press, I have forgotten to mention the 
 Roman Recitations in the Porticos of Baths, &c." (De Quincey, Preface to 
 ' Collected Writings ')• 
 
128 Style. 
 
 aid of powerful accompaniment from voice, gesture, scenery, 
 music, and suffering in no instance from false reading or 
 careless reading. Then, secondly, it was a far wider pub- 
 lication : each drama being read (or heard, which is a far 
 better thing) by 25,000 or 30,000 persons, counterbalancing 
 at least forty editions such as we on an average publish; 
 each oration being delivered with just emphasis to perhaps 
 7000. But why, in this mention of a stage or hustings 
 publication, as opposed to a publication by the printing- 
 press, why was it, we are naturally admonished to ask, 
 that the Greeks had no press ? The ready answer will be, 
 
 — because the art of printing had not been discovered. 
 But that is an error, the detection of which we owe to the 
 present Archbishop of Dublin. 1 The art of printing was 
 discovered. It had been discovered repeatedly. The art 
 which multiplied the legends upon a coin or medal (a work 
 which the ancients performed by many degrees better than 
 we moderns, — for we make it a mechanic art, they a fine 
 art) had in effect anticipated the art of printing. It was 
 an art, this typographic mystery, which awoke and went 
 back to sleep many times over from mere defect of mate- 
 rials. Not the defect of typography as an art,- but the 
 defect of paper as a material for keeping this art in motion, 
 
 — there lay the reason, as Dr. Whately most truly observes, 
 why printed books had no existence amongst the Greeks 
 of Pericles, or afterwards amongst the Romans of Cicero. 
 And why was there no paper? The common reason apply- 
 ing to both countries was the want of linen rags, and that 
 want arose from the universal habit of wearing woollen 
 garments. In this respect Athens and Rome were on the 
 same level. But for Athens the want was driven to a 
 further extremity by the slenderness of her commerce with 
 Egypt, whence only any substitute could have been drawn. 
 
 104. Even for Rome itself the scarcity of paper ran 
 
 i See Whately's ' Rhetoric,' p. 2, note. 
 
Style and Publication. 129 
 
 through many degrees. Horace, 1 the poet, was amused 
 with the town of Equotuticum for two reasons : as incapa- 
 ble of entering into hexameter verse from its prosodial 
 quantity (verm quod dicere non est) ; and because it pur- 
 chased water (vaenit vilissima rerurn aqua), — a circumstance 
 in which it agrees with the well-known Clifton, above the 
 hot wells of Bristol, where water is bought by the shilling's 
 worth. But neither Horatian Equotuticum nor Bristolian 
 Clifton can ever have been as " hard up " for water as the 
 Mecca caravan. And the differences were as great in 
 respect to the want of paper between the Athens of Pericles 
 or Alexander and the Rome of Augustus Caesar. Athens 
 had bad poets, whose names have come down to modern 
 times; but Athens could no more have afforded to punish 
 bad authors by sending their works to grocers — 
 
 " in vioum vendentem pus et odores, 
 Et piper, et quicquid chartis amicitur ineptis" 2 — 
 
 than London, because gorged with the wealth of two Indies, 
 can afford to pave her streets with silver. This practice 
 of applying unsaleable authors to the ignoble uses of retail 
 dealers in petty articles must have existed in Rome for 
 some time before it could have attracted the notice of 
 Horace, and upon some considerable scale as a known pub- 
 lic usage before it could have roused any echoes of public 
 mirth as a satiric allusion, or have had any meaning and 
 sting. 
 
 105. In that one revelation of Horace we see a proof how 
 much paper had become more plentiful. It is true that so 
 long as men dressed in woollen materials it was impossible 
 
 i Satires, I. 5, 11. 87, 88. 
 
 2 Horace, Epistles, II. i. 11. 269, 270. The first line should read in vicum 
 vendentem tus et odores. In Conington's translation: 
 
 "Down to the street where epice and pepper's sold, 
 And all the wares waste paper's used to fold." 
 
180 Style. 
 
 to look for a cheap paper. Maga 1 might have been printed 
 at Rome very well for ten guineas a copy. Paper was dear, 
 undoubtedly, but it could be had. On the other hand, how 
 desperate must have been the bankruptcy at Athens in all 
 materials for receiving the record of thoughts, when we 
 find a polished people having no better tickets or cards for 
 conveying their sentiments to the public than shells! 
 Thence came the very name for civil banishment, viz. ostra- 
 cism, because the votes were marked on an ostracon, or 
 marine shell. Again, in another great city, viz. Syracuse, _ 
 you see men reduced to petalism, or marking their votes by 
 the petals of shrubs. Elsewhere, as indeed many centu- 
 ries nearer to our own times in Constantinople, bull's hide 
 was used for the same purpose. 
 
 106. Well might the poor Greeks adopt the desperate 
 expedient of white plastered walls as the best memorandum- 
 book for a man who had thoughts occurring to him in the 
 night-time. Brass only, or marble, could offer any lasting 
 memorial for thoughts ; and upon what material the parts 
 were written out for the actors on the Athenian stage, or 
 how the elaborate revisals of the text could be carried on, 
 is beyond our power of conjecture. 
 
 107. In this appalling state of embarrassment for the 
 great poet or prose writer, what consequences would natur- 
 ally arise? A king's favourite and friend like Aristotle 
 might command the most costly materials. For instance, 
 if you look back, from this day to 1800, into the advertising 
 records or catalogues of great Parisian publishers, you will 
 find more works of excessive luxury, costing from a thou- 
 sand francs for each copy all the way up to as many guineas, 
 in each separate period of fifteen years than in the whole 
 forty among the wealthier and more enterprising publishers 
 of Great Britain. What is the explanation? Can the very 
 moderate incomes of the French gentry afford to patronize 
 
 1 ' Blackwood's Magazine.' 
 
Style and Publication. 131 
 
 works which are beyond the purses of our British aristoc- 
 racy, who, besides, are so much more of a reading class? 
 Not so : the patronage for these Parisian works of luxury 
 is not domestic, it is exotic: chiefly from emperors and 
 kings ; from great national libraries ; from rich universities ; 
 from the grandees of Russia, Hungary, or Great Britain; 
 and generally from those who, living in splendid castles or 
 hotels, require corresponding furniture, and therefore cor- 
 responding books, because to such people books are neces- 
 sarily furniture, — since, upon the principles of good taste, 
 they must correspond with the splendour of all around 
 them. And in the age of Alexander there were already 
 purchasers enough among royal houses, or the imitators of 
 such houses, to encourage costly copies of attractive works. 
 Aristotle was a privileged man. But in other less favoured 
 eases the strong yearnings for public sympathy were met by 
 blank impossibilities. Much martyrdom, we feel assured, 
 was then suffered by poets. Thousands, it is true, perish 
 in our days, who have never had a solitary reader. But 
 still the existence in print gives a delusive feeling that they 
 may have been read. They are standing in the market all 
 day, and somebody, unperceived by themselves, may have 
 thrown an eye upon their wares. The thing is possible. 
 But for the ancient writer there was a sheer physical im- 
 possibility that any man should sympathize with what he 
 never could have seen, except under the two conditions we 
 have mentioned. 
 
 108. These two cases there were of exemption from this 
 dire physical resistance, — two conditions which made pub- 
 lication possible ; and, under the horrible circumstances of 
 sequestration for authors in general, need it be said that to 
 benefit by either advantage was sought with such a zeal as, 
 in effect, extinguished all other literature? If a man could 
 be a poet for the stage, a scriptor scenicus, in that case he 
 was published. If a man could be admitted as an orator, 
 
132 Style. 
 
 as a regular demagogus, upon the popular bema or hustings, 
 in that case he was published. If his own thoughts were a 
 torment to him, until they were reverberated from the hearts 
 and flashing eyes and clamorous sympathy of a multitude, 
 thus only an outlet was provided, a mouth was opened, for 
 the volcano surging within his brain. The vast theatre was 
 an organ of publication; the political forum was an organ 
 of publication. And on this twofold arena a torch was 
 applied to that inflammable gas which exhaled spontaneously 
 from so excitable a mind as the mind of the Athenian. 
 
 109. Need we wonder, then, at the torrent-like determi- 
 nation with which Athenian literature, from the era 444 b.c. 
 to the era 333 b.c, ran headlong into one or other channel, 
 — the scenical poetry or the eloquence of the hustings? 
 For an Athenian in search of popular applause or of sym- 
 pathy there was no other avenue to either; unless, indeed, 
 in the character of an artist, or of a leading soldier: but 
 too often, in this latter class, it happened that mercenary 
 foreigners had a preference. And thus it was that, during 
 that period when the popular cast of government throughout 
 Greece awakened patriotic emulation, scarcely anything is 
 heard of in literature (allowing for the succession to philo- 
 sophic chairs, which made it their pride to be private and 
 exclusive) except dramatic poetry on the one hand, comic 
 or tragic, and political oratory on the other. 
 
 110. As to this last avenue to the public ear, how it was 
 abused, in what excess it became the nuisance and capital 
 scourge of Athens, there needs only the testimony of all 
 contemporary men who happened to stand aloof from that 
 profession, or all subsequent men even of that very profes- 
 sion who were not blinded by some corresponding interest 
 in some similar system of delusion. Euripides and Aris- 
 tophanes, contemporary with the earliest practitioners of 
 name and power on that stage of jugglers, are overrun with 
 expressions of horror for these public pests. " You have 
 
Style and Publication. 133 
 
 every qualification," says Aristophanes 1 to an aspirant, 
 "that could be wished for a public orator: <f>u>vr) /juapa. — a 
 voice like seven devils; kokos yeyovas — you are by nature a 
 scamp; dyopaios el — you are up to snuff in the business of 
 the forum." From Euripides might be gathered a small 
 volume, relying merely upon so much of his works as yet 
 survives, in illustration of the horror which possessed him 
 for this gang of public misleaders : — 
 
 Tout ia8 6 6vt)t<dv ev 7roAeis oiKov/ievas 
 Aojuous T d7r0AA.ur — 01 KaAot \iav Aoyoi. 2 
 
 111. " This is what overthrows cities admirably organised, 
 and the households of men, — your superfine harangues." 
 Cicero, full four centuries later, looking back to this very 
 period from Pericles to Alexander, friendly as he was by 
 the esprit de corps to the order of orators, and professionally 
 biassed to uphold the civil uses of eloquence, yet, as an 
 honest man, cannot deny that it was this gift of oratory, 
 hideously abused, which led to the overthrow of Athens and 
 the ruin of Grecian liberty: "Ilia vetus Graecia, quae quon- 
 dam opibus, imperio, gloria floruit, hoc uno malo concidit, 
 — libertate immoderata ac licentia concionum." Quintilian, 
 standing on the very same ground of professional prejudice, 
 all in favor of public orators, yet is forced into the same 
 sorrowful confession. In one of the Declamations 8 ascribed 
 to him he says, " Civitatum status scimus ab oratoribus esse 
 conversos " ; and in illustration he adds the example of 
 Athens : " sive illam Atheniensium civitatem (quandam late 
 principem) intueri placeat, accisas ejus vires animadverte- 
 mus vitio concionantium." Root and branch, Athens was 
 laid prostrate by her wicked Radical orators ; for Radical, 
 in the elliptic phrase of modern politics, they were almost 
 
 1 ' Knights,' 1. 218. 2 ' Hippolytus,' 11. 486, 487. 
 
 8 cclxviii. 
 
134 Style. 
 
 to a man; and in this feature above all others (a feature 
 often scornfully exposed by Euripides) those technically 
 known as ol XeyovTes, the speaking men, and as 01 S^ayuyoi, 1 
 the misleaders of the mob, offer a most suitable ancestry for 
 the modern leaders of Radicalism, — that with their base, 
 fawning flatteries of the people they mixed up the venom of 
 vipers against their opponents and against the aristocracy 
 of the land. 
 
 ^TroyXvKawuv piy/tariois fnayupiKoi^ — 
 
 " subtly to wheedle the people with honeyed words dressed 
 to its palate " : this had been the ironical advice of the 
 scoffing Aristophanes. 2 That practice made the mob orator 
 contemptible to manly tastes, rather than hateful. But 
 the sacrifice of independence — the "pride which licks the 
 dust " — is the readiest training for all uncharitableness 
 and falsehood towards those who seem either rivals for the 
 same base purposes, or open antagonists for nobler. And, 
 accordingly, it is remarked by Euripides that these pesti- 
 lent abusers of the popular confidence would bring a mis- 
 chief upon Athens before they had finished, equally by their 
 sycophancies to the mob and by their libels of foreign 
 princes. Hundreds of years afterwards, a Greek writer, 
 upon reviewing this most interesting period of one hundred 
 and eleven years, from Pericles to Alexander, sums up and 
 repeats the opinion of Euripides in this general representa- 
 
 1 With respect to the word " demagogues," as a technical designation for 
 the political orators and partisans at Athens (otherwise called 01 ttpoo-totoi, 
 those who headed any movement) , it is singular that so accurate a Greek 
 scholar as Henry Stephens should have supposed linguas promptas ad 
 plebem concitandvm (an expression of Livy's) potius toix Srmayoyav fitisse 
 quam ™v pij-ropioy ; as if the demagogues were a separate class from the 
 popular orators. But, says Valckenaer, the relation is soon stated: not 
 all the Athenian orators were demagogues, but all the demagogues were in 
 fact, and technically were called, orators. -De Q. 
 
 2 ' Knights,' 1. 216. The first word should be viroyAu«<u>*wv. 
 
Style and Publication. 135 
 
 tive portrait of Attic oratory, with respect to which we wish 
 to ask, Can any better delineation be given of a Chartist, or 
 generically of a modern Jacobin? — 'O S^ayuyos kokoSi- 
 Sao-KaAet tods ttoAAous, \eyuiv to. K€^apicr/ici/a — " The mob-leader 
 dupes the multitude with false doctrines, whilst delivering 
 things soothing to their credulous vanity." This is one 
 half of his office, — sycophancy to the immediate purse- 
 holders, and poison to the sources of truth; the other half 
 is expressed with the same spirit of prophecy as regards the 
 British future, koj. Sia/JoAcus avrovs i£aWoTpioi irpos tods 
 dpio-Tous, — "and by lying calumnies he utterly alienates 
 them in relation to their own native aristocracy." 
 
 112. Now this was a base pursuit, though somewhat 
 relieved by the closing example of Demosthenes, who, amidst 
 much frailty, had .a generous nature; and he showed it 
 chiefly by his death, and in his lifetime, to use Milton's 
 words, 1 by uttering many times " odious truth," which, with 
 noble courage, he compelled the mob to hear. But one man 
 could not redeem a national dishonour. It was such, and 
 such it was felt to be. Men, therefore, of elevated natures, 
 and men of gentle pacific natures, equally revolted from a 
 trade of lies, as regarded the audience, and of strife, as 
 regarded the competitors. There remained the one other 
 pursuit of scenical poetry; and it hardly needs to be said 
 what crowding there was amongst all the energetic minds of 
 Athens into one or other of these pursuits: the one for the 
 unworldly and idealising, the other for the coarsely ambi- 
 tious. These, therefore, became the two quasi professions 
 of Athens, and at the same time, in a sense more exclusive 
 than can now be true of our professions, became the sole 
 means of publication for truth of any class, and a publica- 
 tion by many degrees more certain, more extensive, and 
 more immediate, than ours by the press. 
 
 113. The Athenian theatre published an edition of thirty 
 
 i P. L., XI. 1. 704. 
 
136 Style. 
 
 thousand. 1 copies in one day, enabling, in effect, every male 
 citizen capable of attending, from the age of twenty to sixty, 
 together with many thousands of domiciled aliens, to read 
 the drama, with the fullest understanding of its sense and 
 poetic force that could be effected by natural powers of voice 
 and action, combined with all possible auxiliaries of art, of 
 music, of pantomimic dancing, and the whole carried home 
 to the heart by visible and audible sympathy in excess. 
 This, but in a very inferior form as regarded the adjuncts 
 of art, and the scale of the theatre, and the mise en scene, 
 was precisely the advantage of Charles I. for appreciating 
 Shakspere. 
 
 114. It was a standing reproach of the Puritans, adopted 
 even by Milton, 2 a leaden shaft feathered and made buoyant 
 by his wit, that the King had adopted that stage poet as the 
 companion of his closet retirements. So it would have 
 been a pity if these malignant persecutors of the royal 
 solitude should have been liars as well as fanatics. Doubt- 
 less, even when king, and in his afflictions, this storm- 
 vexed man did read Shakspere. But that was not the 
 original way in which he acquired his acquaintance with 
 the poet. A Prince of Wales, what between public claims 
 and social claims, finds little time for reading after the 
 period of childhood, — that is, at any period when he can 
 comprehend a great poet. And it was as Prince of Wales 
 that Charles prosecuted his studies of Shakspere. He saw 
 continually at Whitehall, personated by the best actors of 
 the time, illustrated by the stage management, and assisted 
 by the mechanic displays of Inigo Jones, all the principal 
 dramas of Shakspere actually performed. That was publi- 
 cation with an Athenian advantage. A thousand copies of 
 a book may be brought into public libraries, and not one of 
 
 1 The number given in Plato's 'Symposium.' According to a recent 
 estimate, the number of seats in the theatre of Dionysus at Athens was 
 27,500. See Zeitsch. f. Mid. Kunst. XIII. 202. 
 
 2 ' Eikonoklastes,' chap. I. 
 
Style and Publication. 137 
 
 them opened. But the three thousand copies of a play which 
 Drury Lane used to publish in one night were in the most 
 literal sense as well as in spirit read, — properly punctuated 
 by the speakers, made intelligible by voice and action 
 endowed with life and emphasis : in short, on each successive 
 performance, a very large edition of a fine tragedy was pub- 
 lished in the most impressive sense of publication, — not 
 merely with accuracy, but with a mimic reality that forbade 
 all forgetting, and was liable to no inattention. 
 
 115. Now, if Drury Lane published a drama for Shak- 
 spere by three thousand copies in one night, the Athenian 
 theatre published ten times that amount for Sophocles. 
 And this mode of publication in Athens, not co-operating 
 (as in modern times) with other modes, but standing out in 
 solitary conspicuous relief, gave an artificial bounty upon 
 that one mode of poetic composition, as the hustings did 
 upon one mode of prose composition. And those two modes, 
 being thus cultivated to the utter exclusion of others -which 
 did not benefit by that bounty of publication, gave an 
 unnatural bias to the national style, determined in effect 
 upon too narrow a scale the operative ideal of composition, 
 and finally made the dramatic artist and the mob orator the 
 two sole intellectual professions for Athens. Hence came a 
 great limitation of style in practice; and hence, secondly, 
 for reasons connected with these two modes of composition, 
 a general neglect of style as a didactic theory. 
 
EHETOEIC. 
 
 i. Popular Conceptions of Rhetoric. 
 
 1. No art cultivated by man has suffered more in the 
 revolutions of taste and opinion than the art of Rhetoric. 
 There was a time when, by an undue extension of this term, 
 it designated the whole cycle of accomplishments which 
 prepared a man for public affairs. Prom that height it has 
 descended to a level with the arts of alchemy and astrology, 
 as holding out promises which consist in a mixed degree of 
 impostures wherever its pretensions happened to be weighty, 
 and of trifles wherever they happened to be true. If we 
 look into the prevailing theory of Rhetoric, under which it 
 meets with so degrading an estimate, we shall find that it 
 fluctuates between two different conceptions, according to 
 one of which it is an art of ostentatious ornament, and 
 according to the other an art of sophistry. 2 A man is held 
 to play the rhetorician when he treats a subject with more 
 than usual gaiety of ornament, and, perhaps we may add, as 
 an essential element in the idea, with conscious ornament. 
 This is one view of Rhetoric: and under this what it 
 accomplishes is not so much to persuade as to delight, 
 not so much to win the assent as to stimulate the atten- 
 tion and captivate the taste. And even this purpose is 
 attached to something separable and accidental in the man- 
 
 1 Suggested as an excursive review by Whately's Elements of Rhetoric. 
 — De Q. 2 Cf. the discussion in Plato's ' Gorgias,' esp. p. 463. 
 
 138 
 
Popular Conceptions of Rhetoric. 139 
 
 ner. But the other idea of Rhetoric lays its foundation 
 in something essential to the matter. This is that rhetoric 
 of which Milton spoke as able "to dash maturest counsels 
 and to make the worse appear the better reason." Now, it 
 is clear that argument of some quality or other must be taken 
 as the principle of this rhetoric ; for those must be immature 
 counsels indeed that could be dashed by mere embellish- 
 ments of manner, or by artifices of diction and arrangement. 
 
 2. Here then we have in popular use two separate ideas 
 of Rhetoric : one of which is occupied with the general end 
 of the fine art's — that is to say, intellectual pleasure ; the 
 other applies itself more specifically to a definite purpose of 
 utility, viz. fraud. 
 
 3. Such is the popular idea of Rhetoric; which wants 
 both unity and precision. If we seek these from the formal 
 teachers of Rhetoric, our embarrassment is not much 
 relieved. All of them agree that Rhetoric may be defined 
 the art of persuasion. But, if we inquire what is persua- 
 sion, we find them vague and indefinite or even contradic- 
 tory. To waive a thousand of others, Dr. Whately, in the 
 work before us, insists upon the conviction of the under- 
 standing as " an essential part of persuasion " ; and, on the 
 other hand, the author of the Philosophy of Rhetoric L is 
 equally satisfied that there is no persuasion without an 
 appeal to the passions. Here are two views. We, for our 
 parts, have a third which excludes both. Where conviction 
 begins, the field of Rhetoric ends ; that is our opinion : and, 
 as to the passions, we contend that they are not within the 
 province of Rhetoric, but of Eloquence. 2 
 
 1 Dr. George Campbell. The two views are not, however, essentially 
 different, for "Whately also treats of the appeal to the passions. See, for 
 the latter's discussion of Campbell's term, 'The Elements of Rhetoric,' 
 Pt. II., chap. 1, with which cf. Campbell's ' Philosophy of Rhetoric,' Bk. I., 
 chap. 7. 
 
 2 Some of the more important definitions of Rhetoric are the following: 
 Apollodorus: "The first and supreme object of judicial pleading is to 
 
140 Rhetoric. 
 
 ii. Aristotle's View of Rhetoric. 
 
 4. In this view of Khetoric and its functions we coincide 
 with Aristotle ; as indeed originally we took it up on a sug- 
 
 persuade the judge, and to lead him to whatever opinion the speaker may 
 wish." Patrocles : " The power of finding whatever is persuasive in speak- 
 ing." Theodorus (of Byzantium) : " The power of discovering and express- 
 ing with elegance whatever is credible on any subject whatever." Ariston : 
 "The science of discovering and expressing what ought to be said on 
 political affairs, in language adapted to persuade the people." Theodorus 
 (of Gadara) : " The art that discovers, and judges, and enunciates with suit- 
 able eloquence according to the measure of that which may be found adapted 
 to persuading, in any subject connected with political affairs." Corne- 
 lius Celsus: "To speak persuasively on doubtful and political matters." 
 Chrysippus: "The science of speaking properly." Albertius: "Theartof 
 speaking well on political questions, and with probability." The above are 
 taken from Quintilian ('Institutes,' II. 16), who approves the definition, 
 "The art of speaking well." In Plato's ' Gorgias,' Socrates draws from 
 the rhetorician after whom the dialogue is named the admission that rheto- 
 ric is "the artificer of a persuasion which creates belief about justice and 
 injustice, but gives no instruction about them" (p. 455). According to 
 Socrates (pp. 461-463), rhetoric as ordinarily practised is a routine or 
 'flattery,' like the art of cooking: its end is gratification of the senses. 
 He conceives of a true rhetoric (p. 504) whose object is to exert the power 
 (p. 509) of words to further the good of the state. Aristotle: "A faculty 
 of discovering all the possible means of persuasion in any subject " (' Rhet.' 
 I. 2). Cicero: "The proper concern of an orator is language of power and 
 elegance accommodated to the feelings and understandings of mankind" 
 (' De Oratore,' 1. 13). Bacon : " The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply 
 reason to imagination for the better moving of the will " (' Adv. of Learn- 
 ing,' Bk. II., Vol. 3, p. 408). Campbell : " That art or talent by which the 
 discourse is adapted to its end" ('Philosophy of Rhetoric,' Book I., 
 chap. 1). Whately: "The province of rhetoric, in the widest acceptation 
 that would be rendered admissible, comprehends all ' Composition in Prose ' : 
 in the narrowed sense it would be limited to 'persuasive speaking.' I 
 propose in the present work to adopt a middle course between these two 
 extreme points, and to treat of ' Argumentative composition ' generally and 
 exclusively" ('Rhetoric,' Introd.). Bain: "Rhetoric discusses the means 
 whereby language, spoken or written, may be rendered effective" ('Com- 
 pos, and Rhet.' p. 19). Theremin: "Rhetoric considered as the theory of 
 eloquence is a part of ethics, and . . . eloquence itself is an ability to exert 
 influence according to ethical laws, — that is to say, is a virtue" ('Outlines 
 of a Systematic Rhet.,' trans, by Shedd, p. 69). A. S. Hill: "The art of 
 efficient communication by language" ('Principles of Rhetoric,' Introd.). 
 
Aristotle's View of Rhetoric. 141 
 
 gestion derived from him. But, as all parties may possibly 
 fancy a confirmation of their views in Aristotle, we will say 
 a word or two in support of our own interpretation of that 
 author which will surprise our Oxford friends. Our expla- 
 nation involves a very remarkable detection, which will tax 
 many thousands of books with error in a particular point 
 supposed to be as well established as the hills. We ques- 
 tion, indeed, whether any fulminating powder, descending 
 upon the schools of Oxford, would cause more consternation 
 than the explosion of that novelty which we are going to 
 discharge. 
 
 5. Many years ago, when studying the Aristotelian 
 Rhetoric at Oxford, it struck us that, by whatever name 
 Aristotle might describe the main purpose of Rhetoric, 
 practically, at least, in his own treatment of it, he threw 
 the whole stress upon finding such arguments for any given 
 thesis as, without positively proving or disproving it, should 
 give it a colourable support. It could not be by accident 
 that the topics, or general heads of argument, were never in 
 an absolute and unconditional sense true, but contained so 
 much of plausible or colourable truth as is expressed in the 
 original meaning of the word probable. A ratio probabilis, 
 in the Latin use of the word probabilis, is that ground of 
 assent — not which the understanding can solemnly approve 
 and abide by — but the very opposite to this ; one which it 
 
 D. J. Hill : " The science of the laws of effective discourse " (' Science of 
 Rhetoric,' p. 37). Genung: "The art of adapting discourse, in harmony 
 with its subject and occasion, to the requirements of a reader or hearer " 
 (' Elements of Rhet.,' p. 1). Stoekl : " The subject with which Rhetoric is 
 concerned is oratory. . . . Oratory, in the subjective sense, is the art of 
 employing the power of discourse so as to persuade the understanding, 
 arouse the feelings, and direct the will " (' Grundriss der Aesthetik und 
 Rhetorik,' p. 127). Spalding: "The theory of certain processes of com- 
 munication, all of which have language for their instrument " (Encycl. 
 Brit., 8th ed.). Century Dictionary: " Rhetoric is that art which consists 
 in a systematic use of the technical means of influencing the minds, imagi- 
 nations, emotions and actions of others by the use of language." 
 
142 Rhetoric. 
 
 can submit to for a moment, and countenance as within the 
 limits of the plausible. 1 That this was the real governing 
 law of Aristotle's procedure it was not possible to doubt: 
 but was it consciously known to himself? If so, how was 
 it to be reconciled with his own formal account of the office 
 of Ehetoric, so often repeated, that it consisted in finding 
 enthymemes? 2 What then was an Enthymeme? 
 
 6. Oxford ! thou wilt think us mad to ask. Certainly we 
 knew, what all the world knows, that an enthymeme was 
 understood to be a syllogism of which one proposition is 
 suppressed — major, minor, or conclusion. But what pos- 
 sible relation had that to rhetoric? Nature sufficiently 
 prompts all men to that sort of ellipsis ; and what imperti- 
 nence in a teacher to build his whole system upon a solemn 
 precept to do this or that, when the rack would not have 
 forced any man to do otherwise! Besides, Aristotle had 
 represented it as the fault of former systems that they 
 applied themselves exclusively to the treatment of the pas- 
 sions 8 — an object foreign to the purpose of the rhetorician, 
 who, in some situations, is absolutely forbidden by law to 
 use any such arts : whereas, says he, his true and universal 
 weapon is the enthymeme, which is open to him everywhere. 
 Now, what opposition, or what relation of any kind, can be 
 imagined between the system which he rejects and the one 
 he adopts, if the enthymeme is to be understood as it usually 
 has been? The rhetorician is not to address the passions, 
 but — what? to mind that in all his arguments he suppresses 
 one of his propositions ! And these follies are put into the 
 mouth of Aristotle ! 
 
 1 It is ludicrous to see the perplexity of some translators and commenta- 
 tors of the Rhetoric, who, having read it under a false point of view, 
 labour to defend it on that footing. On its real footing it needs no defence. 
 -De Q. 
 
 2 " Enthymemes, which are the soul of proof." — 'Rhetoric,' Bk. I., 
 chap. 1. 
 
 8 'Rhetoric,' Bk. I., chap. 1. 
 
Aristotle's View of Rhetoric. 143 
 
 7. In this perplexity a learned Scottish friend 1 commu- 
 nicated to us an Essay of Eacciolati's, read publicly about 
 a century ago (Nov. 1724), and entitled De Enthymemate,'* 
 in which he maintains that the received idea of the enthy- 
 meme is a total blunder, and triumphantly restores the lost 
 idea. " Nego, '' says he, " nego enthymema esse syllogismum 
 mutilum, ut vulgo dialectici docent. Nego, inquam, et per- 
 nego enthymema enunciatione una et conclusione constare, 
 quamvis ita in scholis omnibus finiatur, et a nobis ipsis fi- 
 nitum sit aliquando, nolentibus extra locum lites suscipere." 
 I deny, says he, that the enthymeme properly understood is a 
 truncated syllogism, as commonly is taught by dialecticians. 
 I deny, let me repeat, peremptorily and furiously I deny, that 
 the enthymeme consists of one premiss and the conclusion: 
 although that doctrine has been laid down universally in the 
 schools, and upon one occasion even by myself, as unwilling to 
 move the question prematurely or out of its natural place. 
 
 8. Eacciolati is not the least accurate of logicians because 
 he may chance to be the most elegant. Yet, we apprehend, 
 that at such innovations Smiglecius will stir in his grave, 
 Keckermannus will groan, " Dutch 3 Burgersdyk " will snort, 
 and English Crackenthorpius (who has the honour to be an 
 ancestor of Mr. Wordsworth), though buried for two cen- 
 turies, will revisit the glimpses of the moon. And really, 
 
 1 This '* learned Scottish friend " was the late Sir William Hamilton. It 
 was in the summer before Waterloo, viz. in the summer of 1814, that I first 
 became acquainted with him — in fact forty-five years ago on this 20th day 
 of March, 1859, from which I date my hurried revision of this paper enti- 
 tled Rhetoric. — De Q. 
 
 * It stands at p. 227 of Jacobi Facciolati Orationes XII, Acroases, &c. 
 Patavii, 1729. — This is the second Italian edition, and was printed at the 
 University Press. — De Q. 
 
 ' 3 " Dutch Burgersdyk " : — Pope in the Dunciad. The other names, if 
 qualified apparently to frighten a horse, are all real names of men who did 
 business in logic some 250 and 200 years ago, and were really no pretend- 
 ers, though unhappily both grim and grimy in the impertinent estimates 
 of contemporary women. — De Q. 
 
144 Rhetoric. 
 
 if the question, were for a name, Heaven forbid that we 
 should disturb the peace of logicians : they might have leave 
 to say, as of the Strid in Wharfdale, 
 
 " It has borne that name a thousand years, 
 And shall a thousand more." 
 
 But, whilst the name is abused, the idea perishes. Faccio- 
 lati undoubtedly is right : nor is he the first who has observed 
 the error. Julius Pacius, who understood Aristotle better 
 than any man that ever lived, had long before remarked it. 
 The arguments of Facciolati we will give below ; 1 it may be 
 
 1 Upon an innovation of such magnitude, and which will he so startling 
 to scholars, it is but fair that Facciolati should have the benefit of all his 
 own arguments : and we have therefore resolved to condense them. 1. He 
 begins with that very passage (or one of them) on which the received idea 
 of the Enthymeme most relies ; and from this he derives an argument for 
 the new idea. The passage is to this effect, that the enthymeme is com- 
 posed 6K 7roAAa/a? khimoviav r\ ef tov 6 ctvAAoylct^ios — i.e. frequently Consists 
 
 of fewer parts than the syllogism. Frequently ! What logic is there in 
 that ? Can it be imagined that so rigorous a logician as Aristotle would 
 notice, as a circumstance of frequent occurrence in an enthymeme, what, 
 by the received doctrine, should be its mere essence and differential prin- 
 ciple ? To say that this happens frequently is to say, by implication, that 
 sometimes it does not happen — i.e. that it is an accident, and no part of 
 the definition, since it may thus confessedly be absent, salva ratione con- 
 ceptus. 2. Waiving this argument, and supposing the suppression of one 
 proposition to be even universal in the enthymeme, still it would be an im- 
 pertinent circumstance, and (philosophically speaking) au accident. Could 
 it be tolerated that a great systematic distinction (for such it is in Aris- 
 totle) should rest upon a, mere abbreviation of convenience, " quasi vero 
 argumentandi ratio et natura varietur cum brevius effertur," whereas 
 
 Aristotle himself tells US, that " oil irpoe TOf f£w Aoyoi- if djroSeifts, ciAAa irpos 
 
 to>- iv rji >Iivxji" ? 3. From a particular passage in the 2d book of the Prior 
 Analytics (chap. 27), generally interpreted in a way to favour the existing 
 account of the enthymeme, after first of all showing that under a more 
 accurate construction it is incompatible with that account, whilst it is in 
 perfect harmony with the new one, Facciolati deduces an explanation of 
 that accidental peculiarity in the enthymeme which has attracted such un- 
 due attention as to eclipse its true characteristic : the peculiarity, we mean, 
 of being entitled (though not, as the common idea is, required) to suppress 
 one proposition. So much we shall here anticipate as to say that this priv- 
 ilege arises out of the peculiar matter of the enthymeme, which fitted it 
 
Aristotle's View of Rhetoric. 145 
 
 sufficient here to state the result. An enthymeme differs 
 from a syllogism, not in the accident of suppressing one of 
 
 for the purposes of the rhetorician ; and these purposes, heing loose and 
 popular, brought with them proportionable indulgences ; whereas the syllo- 
 gism, technically so called, employing a severer matter, belonged peculiarly 
 to the dialectician, or philosophic disputant, whose purposes, being rigor- 
 ous and scientific, imposed much closer restrictions ; and one of these was 
 that he should in no case suppress any proposition, however obvious, but 
 should formally enunciate all : just as in the debating schools of later ages 
 it has always been the rule that, before urging his objection, the opponent 
 should repeat the respondent's syllogism. Hence, although the rhetorician 
 naturally used his privilege, and enthymemes were in fact generally shorn 
 of one proposition (and vice versa with respect to syllogisms in the strict 
 philosophic sense), yet was all this a mere effect of usage and accident; 
 and it was very possible for an enthymeme to have its full complement 
 of parts, whilst a syllogism might be defective in the very way which is 
 falsely supposed to be of the essence of an enthymeme. i. He derives an 
 argument from an inconsistency with which Aristotle has been thought 
 chargeable under the old idea of the enthymeme, and with which Gassendi 
 has in fact charged him. 1 5. He meets and rebuts the force of a principal 
 argument in favour of the enthymeme as commonly understood, viz. that in 
 a particular part of the Prior Analytics the enthymeme is called trvKkoyiirnos 
 otsAtis, an imperfect syllogism, — which word the commentators generally 
 expound by " mutilus atque imminutus." Here he uses the assistance 
 of the excellent J. Pace, whom he justly describes as " virum Graecarum 
 litterarum peritissimum, philosophum in primis bonum, et Aristotelis inter- 
 pretum, quot sunt, quotque fuerunt, quotque futuri sunt, longe praestantis- 
 simum." This admirable commentator, so indispensable to all who would 
 study the Organon and the nepi *vxik, had himself originally started that 
 hypothesis which we are now reporting as long afterwards adopted and 
 improved by Facciolati. Considering the unrivalled qualifications of Pace, 
 this of itself is a great argument on our side. The objection before us, 
 from the word ireAij!, Pace disposes of briefly and conclusively. First, he 
 says that the word is wanting in four MSS. ; and he has no doubt himself 
 "quin ex glossemate irrepserit in contextum." Secondly, the Latin trans- 
 lators and schoolmen, as Agricola and many others, take no notice of this 
 word in their versions and commentaries. Thirdly, the Greek commenta- 
 tors, such as Joannes Grammaticus and Alexander Aphrodisiensis, clearly 
 had no knowledge of any such use of the word enthymeme as that which 
 
 1 However, as in reality the whole case was one of mere misapprehension on the 
 part of Gassendi, and has, in fact, nothing at all to do with the nature of the enthy- 
 meme, well or ill understood, Facciolati takes nothing by this particular argument; 
 which, however, we have retained, to make our analysis complete. — Dk Q. 
 
146 Rhetoric. 
 
 its propositions; either may do this, or neither; the differ- 
 ence is essential, and in the nature of the matter : that of 
 the syllogism proper being certain and apodeictic; that of 
 the enthymeme simply probable, and drawn from the prov- 
 ince of opinion. 
 
 iii. Rhetoric Defined. 
 
 9. This theory tallies exactly with our own previous 
 construction of Aristotle's Rhetoric, and explains the stress 
 which he had laid at the outset upon enthymemes. j What- 
 soever is certain, or matter of fixed science, can be no subject 
 for the rhetorician : where it is possible for the understand- 
 ing to be convinced, no field is open for rhetorical persua- 
 sion. Absolute certainty and fixed science transcend 
 opinion, and exclude the probable. The province of Rhet- 
 oric, whether meant for an influence upon the actions, or 
 simply upon the belief, lies amongst that vast field of cases 
 where there is a pro and a con, with the chance of right and 
 wrong, true and false, distributed in varying proportions 
 between them. There is also an immense range of truths 
 where there are no chances at all concerned, but the affirma- 
 tive and the negative are both true: as, for example, the 
 goodness of human nature and its wickedness ; the happi- 
 ness of human life and its misery ; the charms of knowledge, 
 and its hollowness ; the fragility of human prosperity in the 
 eye of religious meditation, and its security as estimated by 
 worldly confidence and youthful hope. In all such cases 
 the rhetorician exhibits his art by giving an impulse to one 
 side, and by withdrawing the mind so steadily from all 
 thoughts or images which support the other as to leave it 
 practically under the possession of a one-sided estimate. 
 
 has prevailed in later times; which is plain from this, — that, wherever 
 they have occasion to speak of a syllogism wanting one of its members, 
 they do not in any instance call it an enthymeme, hut a auAAoyiiriuov iiovo- 
 
 krjfifLaTov. — De Q. 
 
Rhetoric Defined. 147 
 
 10. Upon this theory, what relation to Khetoric shall we 
 assign to style and the ornamental arts of composition? In 
 some respects they seem liable to the same objection as that 
 which Aristotle has urged against appeals to the passions. 1 
 Both are extra-essential, or efu> tov TrpayfiaTos ; they are 
 subjective arts, not objective ; that is, they do not affect the 
 thing which is to be surveyed, but the eye of him who is to 
 survey. Yet, at a banquet, the epicure holds himself not 
 more obliged to the cook for the venison than to the physi- 
 cian who braces his stomach to enjoy. And any arts which 
 conciliate regard to the speaker indirectly promote the effect 
 of his arguments. On this account, and because (under the 
 severest limitation of Rhetoric) they are in many cases 
 indispensable to the perfect interpretation of the thoughts, 
 we may admit arts of style and ornamental composition as 
 the ministerial part of Rhetoric. But with regard to the 
 passions, as contended for by Dr. Campbell, it is a sufficient 
 answer that they are already preoccupied by what is called 
 Eloquence. 
 
 11. Coleridge, as we have often heard, is in the habit of 
 drawing the line with much philosophical beauty between 
 Rhetoric and Eloquence. On this topic we were never so 
 fortunate as to hear him : but, if we are here called upon 
 for a distinction, we shall satisfy our immediate purpose by 
 a very plain and brief one. By Eloquence we understand 
 the overflow of powerful feelings upon occasions fitted to 
 excite them. But Rhetoric is the art of aggrandizing and 
 bringing out into strong relief, by means of various and 
 striking thoughts, some aspect of truth which of itself is 
 supported by no spontaneous feelings, and therefore rests 
 upon artificial aids. 
 
 1 See essay on ' Language,' §§ 16-19. 
 
148 Rhetoric. 
 
 iv. Practical Rhetoric amongst the Greeks. 
 
 12. Greece, as may well be imagined, was the birthplace 
 of Ehetoric: to which of the Pine Arts was it not? and 
 here, in one sense of the word Rhetoric, the art had its con- 
 summation: for the theory, or ars docens, 1 was taught with 
 a fulness and an accuracy by the Grecian masters not after- 
 wards approached. In particular, it was so taught by Aris- 
 totle: whose system we are disposed to agree With Dr. 
 Whately in pronouncing the best as regards the primary 
 purpose of a teacher ; though otherwise, for elegance and as 
 a practical model in the art he was expounding, neither 
 Aristotle, nor any less austere among the Greek rhetoricians, 
 has any pretensions to measure himself with Quintilian. In 
 reality, for a triumph over the difficulties of the subject, 
 and as a lesson on the possibility of imparting grace to the 
 treatment of scholastic topics naturally as intractable as 
 that of Grammar or Prosody there is no such chef-d'oeuvre 
 to this hour in any literature as the Institutions of Quin- 
 tilian. Laying this one case out of the comparison, how- 
 ever, the Greek superiority was indisputable. 
 
 13. Yet how is it to be explained that, with these advan- 
 tages on the side of the Greek Rhetoric as an ars docens, 
 Rhetoric as a practical art (the ars utens) never made any 
 advances amongst the Greeks to the brilliancy which it 
 attained in Rome? Up to a certain period, and throughout 
 the palmy state of the Greek republics, we may account for 
 it thus : — Rhetoric, in its finest and most absolute burnish, 
 may be called an eloquentia umbratica ; that is, it aims at an 
 elaborate form of beauty which shrinks from the strife of 
 business, and could neither arise nor make itself felt in a 
 tumultuous assembly. Certain features, it is well known, 
 and peculiar styles of countenance, which are impressive in 
 a drawing-room become ineffective on a public stage. The 
 
 1 See Appendix. 
 
Practical Rhetoric amongst the Greeks. 149 
 
 fine tooling and delicate tracery of the cabinet artist is lost 
 upon a building of colossal proportions. Extemporaneous- 
 ness, again, — a favourable circumstance to impassioned elo- 
 quence, — is death to Rhetoric. Two characteristics x indeed 
 there were of a Greek popular assembly which must have 
 operated fatally on the rhetorician : its fervour, in the first 
 place; and, secondly, the coarseness of a real interest. All 
 great rhetoricians in selecting their subject have shunned 
 the determinate cases of real life : and even in the single 
 instance of a deviation from the rule — that of the author 
 (whoever he be) of the Declamations attributed to Quintil- 
 ian — the cases are shaped with so romantic a generality, and 
 so slightly circumstantiated, as to allow him all the benefit 
 of pure abstractions. 
 
 14. We can readily understand, therefore, why the fervid 
 oratory of the Athenian assemblies, and the intense reality 
 of its interest, should stifle the growth of rhetoric: the 
 smoke, tarnish, and demoniac glare of Vesuvius easily 
 eclipse the pallid coruscations of the aurora borealis. And, 
 in fact, amongst the greater orators of Greece there is not 
 a solitary gleam of rhetoric. Isocrates may have a little, 
 being (to say the truth) neither orator nor rhetorician in 
 any eminent sense; Demosthenes has none. But, when 
 those great thunders had subsided which reached " to Mace- 
 don and Artaxerxes' throne," when the "fierce democracy" 
 itself had perished, and Greece had fallen under the com- 
 mon circumstances of the Roman Empire, how came it that 
 Greek Rhetoric did not blossom concurrently with Roman? 
 Vegetate it did; and a rank crop of weeds grew up under 
 the name of Rhetoric, down to the times of the Emperor 
 Julian and his friend Libanius (both of whom, by the way, 
 were as worthless writers as have ever abused the Greek 
 language). But this part of Greek Literature is a desert 
 with no oasis. The fact is, if it were required to assign the 
 
 i Cf. the argument in Part IV. oi' the essay on ' Style.' 
 
150 Rhetoric. 
 
 two bodies of writers who have exhibited the human under- 
 standing in the most abject poverty, and whose works by- 
 no possibility emit a casual scintillation of wit, fancy, just 
 thinking, or good writing, we should certainly fix upon 
 Greek rhetoricians and Italian critics. Amongst the whole 
 mass there is not a page that any judicious friend to liter- 
 ature would wish to reprieve from destruction. And in 
 both cases we apprehend that the possibility of so much 
 inanity is due in part to the quality of the two languages. 
 The diffuseness and loose structure of Greek style unfit it 
 for the closeness, condensation, and to ayxicnpotfiov 1 of rhet- 
 oric ; the melodious beauty of the mere sounds, which both 
 in the Italian and in the Greek are combined with much 
 majesty, dwells upon the ear so delightfully that in no other 
 language is it so easy as in these two to write with little or 
 no meaning, and to flow along through a whole wilderness 
 of inanity without particularly rousing the reader's disgust. 
 
 v. The Rhetoric of the Romans. 
 
 15. In the literature of Rome it is that we find the true 
 El Dorado of rhetoric, as we might expect from the sinewy 
 compactness of the language. Livy, and, above all preced- 
 ing writers, Ovid, display the greatest powers of rhetoric 
 in forms of composition which were not particularly adapted 
 to favour that talent. The contest of Ajax and Ulysses for 
 the arms of Achilles in one of the latter books of the Meta- 
 morphoses is a chef-d'oeuvre of rhetoric, considering its met- 
 rical form; for metre, and especially the flowing heroic 
 hexameter, is no advantage to the rhetorician. 2 The two 
 
 i " Rapid fluctuation." — Longinus, ' De Sublimitate,' XXVII. 
 
 2 This, added to the style and quality of his poems, makes it the more 
 remarkable that Virgil should have heen deemed a rhetorician. Yet so it 
 was. Walsh notices, in the Life of Virgil which he furnished for his friend 
 Dryden's Translation, that " his (Virgil's) rhetoric was in such general 
 esteem that lectures were read upon it in the reign of Tiberius, and the 
 subject of declamations taken out of him.'' — De Q. 
 
The Rhetoric of the Romans. 151 
 
 Plinys, Lucan (though again under the disadvantage of 
 verse), Petronius Arbiter, and Quintilian, but above all the 
 Seneeas (for a Spanish cross appears to improve the quality 
 of the rhetorician), have left a body of rhetorical composi- 
 tion such as no modern nation has rivalled. Even the most 
 brilliant of these writers, however, were occasionally sur- 
 passed in particular bravuras of rhetoric by several of the 
 Latin Fathers, particularly Tertullian, Arnobius, St. Austin, 
 and a writer whose name we cannot at this moment recall. 
 In fact, a little African blood operated as genially in this 
 respect as Spanish, whilst an Asiatic cross was inevitably 
 fatal, by prompting a diffusion and inflation of style radi- 
 cally hostile to the condensation of keen, arrowy rhetoric. 
 Partly from this cause, and partly because they wrote in an 
 unfavourable language, the Greek Fathers are, one and all, 
 Birmingham rhetoricians. Even Gregory Nazianzen is so, 
 with submission to Messieurs of the Port Royal and other 
 bigoted critics who have pronounced him at the very top of 
 the tree among the fine writers of antiquity. Undoubtedly 
 he has a turgid style of mouthy grandiloquence (though 
 often the merest bombast) ; but for polished rhetoric he is 
 singularly unfitted, by inflated habits of thinking, by loiter- 
 ing diffuseness, and a dreadful trick of calling names. The 
 spirit of personal invective is peculiarly adverse to the 
 coolness of rhetoric. As to Chrysostom and Basil, with less 
 of pomp and swagger than Gregory, they have not at all 
 more of rhetorical burnish and compression. Upon the 
 whole, looking back through the dazzling files of the ancient 
 rhetoricians, we are disposed to rank the Seneeas and Ter- 
 tullian as the leaders of the band ; for St. Austin, in his 
 Confessions, and wherever he becomes peculiarly interest- 
 ing, is apt to be impassioned and fervent in a degree which 
 makes him break out of the proper pace of rhetoric. He is 
 matched to trot, and is continually breaking into a gallop. 
 Indeed, his Confessions have in parts, — particularly in 
 
152 Rhetoric. 
 
 those -which relate to the death of his young friend and his 
 own frenzy of grief, — all that real passion which is only 
 imagined in the Confessions of Rousseau under a precon- 
 ception derived from his known character and unhappy 
 life. By the time of the Emperor Justinian (say a.d. 530), 
 or in the interval between that time and the era of Mahomet 
 (a.d. 620), — which interval we regard as the common cre- 
 pusculum between Ancient and Modern History, all Rhetoric 
 (as the professional pretension of a class) seems to have 
 finally expired. 
 
 vi. Rhetoric in the Literature of Modern Europe. 
 
 16. In the Literature of Modern Europe Rhetoric has 
 been cultivated with success. But this remark applies only 
 with any force to a period which is now long past; and it 
 is probable, upon various considerations, that such another 
 period will never revolve. The rhetorician's art in its glory 
 and power has silently faded away before the stern tenden- 
 cies of the age ; and, if, by any peculiarity of taste or strong 
 determination of the intellect, a rhetorician en grande cos- 
 tume were again to appear amongst us, it is certain that he 
 would have no better welcome than a stare of surprise as a 
 posture-maker or balancer, not more elevated in the general 
 estimate, but far less amusing, than the acrobat, or funam- 
 bulist, or equestrian gymnast. No; the age of Rhetoric, 
 \like that of Chivalry, has passed amongst forgotten things; 
 and the rhetorician can have no more chance for returning 
 jthan the rhapsodist of early Greece or the troubadour of 
 ^romance. So multiplied are the modes of intellectual enjoy- 
 ment in modern times that the choice is absolutely dis- 
 tracted ; and in a boundless theatre of pleasures, to be had 
 at little or no cost of intellectual activity, it would be mar- 
 vellous indeed if any considerable audience could be found 
 for an exhibition which presupposes a state of tense exer- 
 
Rhetoric in the Literature of Modem Europe. 153 
 
 tion on the part both of auditor and performer. To hang 
 upon one's own thoughts as an object of conscious interest, 
 to play with them, to watch and pursue them through a 
 maze of inversions, evolutions, and harlequin changes, 
 implies a condition of society either, like that in the mo- 
 nastic ages, forced to introvert its energies from mere defect 
 of books (whence arose the scholastic metaphysics, admi- 
 rable for its subtlety, but famishing the mind whilst it 
 sharpened its edge in one exclusive direction); or, if it 
 implies no absolute starvation of intellect, as in the case of 
 the Roman rhetoric, which arose upon a considerable (though 
 not very various) literature, it proclaims at least a quiescent 
 state of the public mind, unoccupied with daily novelties, 
 and at leisure from the agitations of eternal change. 
 
 17. Growing out of the same condition of society, there 
 is another cause at work which will for ever prevent the 
 resurrection of rhetoric: viz. the necessities of public busi- 
 ness, its vast extent, complexity, fulness of details, and 
 consequent vulgarity, as compared with that of the ancients. 
 The very same cause, by the way, furnishes an answer to 
 the question moved by Hume, in one of his essays, 1 with 
 regard to the declension of eloquence in our deliberative 
 assemblies. Eloquence, or at least that which is senatorial 
 and forensic, has languished under the same changes of 
 society which have proved fatal to Rhetoric. The political 
 economy of the ancient republics, and their commerce, were 
 simple and unelaborate ; the system of their public services, 
 both martial and civil, was arranged on the most naked and 
 manageable principles ; for we must not confound the per- 
 plexity in our modern explanations of these things with a 
 perplexity in the things themselves. The foundation of 
 these differences was in the differences of domestic life. 
 Personal wants being few, both from climate and from 
 habit, and, in the great majority of the citizens, limited 
 
 i ' Of Eloquence,' Philos. Works, Vol. III., p. 104. 
 
154 Rhetoric. 
 
 almost to the pure necessities of nature, — hence arose, for 
 the mass of the population, the possibility of surrendering 
 themselves, much more than with us, either to the one 
 paramount business of the state, war, or to a state of Indian 
 idleness. Rome, in particular, during the ages of her grow- 
 ing luxury, must be regarded as a nation supported by other 
 nations; by largesses, in effect; that is to say, by the 
 plunder of conquest. Living, therefore, upon foreign alms, 
 or upon corn purchased by the product of tribute or of spoils, 
 a nation could readily dispense with that expansive devel- 
 opment of her internal resources upon which Modern Europe 
 has been forced by the more equal distribution of power 
 amongst the civilised world. 
 
 18. The changes which have followed in the functions of 
 our popular assemblies correspond to the great revolution 
 here described. Suppose yourself an ancient Athenian at 
 some customary display of Athenian oratory, what will be 
 the topics? Peace or war, vengeance for public wrongs, or 
 mercy to prostrate submission, national honour and national 
 gratitude, glory and shame, and every aspect of open appeal 
 to the primal sensibilities of man. On the other band, 
 enter an English Parliament, having the most of a popular 
 character in its constitution and practice that is anywhere 
 to be found in the Christendom of this day, and the subject 
 of debate will probably be a road bill, a bill for enabling a 
 coal-gas company to assume certain privileges against a 
 competitor in oil-gas, a bill for disfranchising a corrupt 
 borough, or perhaps some technical point of form in the Ex- 
 chequer Bills bill. So much is the face of public business 
 vulgarized * by details. The same spirit of differences ex- 
 tends to forensic eloquence. Grecian and Roman pleadings 
 
 i Why not " ennobled by details " ? The discussion of the minute par- 
 ticulars of the Budget may be as eventful for human interests, and there- 
 fore as truly eloquent, as high-sounding appeals to the so-called nobler 
 sentiments. 
 
Rhetoric in the Literature of Modern Europe. 155 
 
 are occupied with questions of elementary justice, large and 
 diffusive, apprehensible even to the uninstructed, and con- 
 necting themselves at every step with powerful and tem- 
 pestuous feelings. In British trials, on the contrary, the 
 field is foreclosed against any interest of so elevating a 
 nature, because the rights and wrongs of the case are almost 
 inevitably absorbed to an unlearned eye by the technicalities 
 of the law, or by the intricacy of the facts. 
 
 19. But this is not always the case! Doubtless not: 
 subjects for eloquence, and therefore eloquence, will some- 
 times arise in our senate and our courts of justice. And in 
 one respect our British displays are more advantageously 
 circumstanced than the ancient, being more conspicuously 
 brought forward into effect by their contrast to the ordinary 
 course of business. 
 
 " Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, 
 Since, seldom coming, in the long year set, 
 Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, 
 Or captain jewels in the carcanet." 1 
 
 But still the objection of Hume remains unimpeached as to 
 the fact that eloquence is a rarer growth of modern than of 
 ancient civil polity, even in those countries which have the 
 advantage of free institutions. Now, why is this? The 
 letter of this objection is sustained, but substantially it is 
 disarmed, so far as its purpose was to argue any declension 
 on the part of Christian nations, by this explanation of ours, 
 which traces the impoverished condition of civil eloquence 
 to the complexity of public business. 
 
 20. But eloquence in one form or other is immortal, and 
 will never perish so long as there are human hearts moving 
 under the agitations of hope and fear, love and passionate 
 hatred. And, in particular to us of the modern world, as 
 an endless source of indemnification for what we have lost 
 in the simplicity of our social systems, we have received a 
 
 1 Shakspere, Soimet 52. — De Q. 
 
156 Rhetoric. 
 
 new dowry of eloquence, and that of the highest order, in 
 the sanctities of our religion : a field unknown to antiquity, 
 for the pagan religions did not produce much poetry, and 
 of oratory none at all. 
 
 21. On the other hand, that cause which, operating upon 
 eloquence, has but extinguished it under a single direction, 
 to rhetoric has been unconditionally fatal. Eloquence is 
 not banished from the public business of this country as 
 useless, but as difficult, and as not spontaneously arising 
 from topics such as generally furnish the staple of debate. 
 But rhetoric, if attempted on a formal scale, would be sum- 
 marily exploded as pure foppery and trifling with time. 
 Falstaff on the field of battle presenting his bottle of sack 
 for a pistol, or Polonius with his quibbles, could not appear 
 a more unseasonable plaisanteur than a rhetorician alighting 
 from the clouds upon a public assembly in Great Britain 
 met for the despatch of business. 
 
 22. Under these malign aspects of the modern structure 
 of society, a structure to which the whole world will be 
 moulded as it becomes civilised, there can be no room for 
 any revival of rhetoric in public speaking, and, from the 
 same and other causes, acting upon the standard of public 
 taste, quite as little room in written composition. In spite, 
 however, of the tendencies to this consummation, which 
 have been long ripening, it is a fact that, next after Borne, 
 England is the country in which rhetoric prospered most at 
 a time when science was unborn as a popular interest, and 
 the commercial activities of aftertimes were yet sleeping in 
 their rudiments. This was in the period from the latter 
 end of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury; and, though the English Rhetoric was less rigorously 
 true to its own ideal than the Eoman, and often modulated 
 into a higher key of impassioned eloquence, yet unques- 
 tionably in some of its qualities it remains a monument of 
 the very finest rhetorical powers. 
 
British Rhetoric. 157 
 
 vii. British Rhetoric. 
 
 23. Omitting Sir Philip Sidney, and omitting his friend, 
 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (in whose prose there are 
 some bursts of pathetic eloquence, as there is of rhetoric in 
 his verse, though too often harsh and cloudy), the first 
 very eminent rhetorician in the English Literature is 
 Donne. Dr. Johnson inconsiderately classes him in com- 
 pany with Cowley, &c, under the title of Metaphysical 
 Poets 1 : metaphysical they were not; Rhetorical would have 
 been a more accurate designation. In saying that, how- 
 ever, we must remind our readers that we revert to the 
 original use of the word Rhetoric, as laying the principal 
 stress upon the management of the thoughts, and only a 
 secondary one upon the ornaments of style. Few writers 
 have shown a more extraordinary compass of powers than 
 Donne ; for he combined — what no other man has ever 
 done — the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and 
 address with the most impassioned majesty. Massy dia- 
 monds compose the very substance of his poem on the Me- 
 tempsychosis, thoughts and descriptions which have the 
 fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or iEschylus, 
 whilst a diamond dust of rhetorical brilliancies is strewed 
 over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose. No 
 criticism was ever more unhappy than that of Dr. John- 
 son's which denounces all this artificial display as so much 
 perversion of taste. There cannot be a falser thought than 
 this; for upon that principle a whole class of compositions 
 might be vicious by conforming to its own ideal. The 
 artifice and machinery of rhetoric furnishes in its degree 
 as legitimate a basis for intellectual pleasure as any other ; 
 that the pleasure is of an inferior order, can no more 
 attaint the idea or model of the composition than it can 
 impeach the excellence of an epigram that it is not a trag- 
 
 1 See Johnson's ' Life ' of Cowley. 
 
158 Rhetoric. 
 
 edy. Every species of composition is to be tried, by its 
 own laws ; and, if Dr. Johnson had urged explicitly (what 
 was evidently moving in his thoughts) that a metrical 
 structure, by holding forth the promise of poetry, defrauds 
 the mind of its just expectations, he would have said what 
 is notoriously false. 1 Metre is open to any form of com- 
 position, provided it will aid the expression of the thoughts; 
 and the only sound objection to it is that it has not done so. 
 Weak criticism, indeed, is that which condemns a copy of 
 verses under the ideal of poetry, when the mere substitu- 
 tion of another name and classification suffices to evade the 
 sentence, and to reinstate the composition in its rights as 
 rhetoric. It may be very true that the age of Donne gave 
 too much encouragement to his particular vein of composi- 
 tion. That, however, argues no depravity of taste, but a 
 taste erring only in being too limited and exclusive. 
 
 24. The next writers of distinction who came forward as 
 rhetoricians were Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy and 
 Milton in many of his prose works. They labour under 
 opposite defects. Burton is too quaint, fantastic, and dis- 
 jointed; Milton too slow, solemn, and continuous. In the 
 one we see the flutter of a parachute; in the other the 
 stately and voluminous gyrations of an ascending balloon. 
 Agile movement, and a certain, degree of fancifulness, are 
 indispensable to rhetoric. But Burton is not so much 
 fanciful as capricious ; his motion is not the motion of free- 
 dom, but of lawlessness; he does .not dance, but caper. 
 Milton, on the other hand, polonaises with a grand Castil- 
 ian air, in paces too sequacious and processional; even in 
 his passages of merriment, and when stung into a quicker 
 motion by personal disdain for an unworthy antagonist, 
 
 1 Adjustment to an expected form of stimulus is a generally recognized 
 principle of aesthetics. See Spencer's ' Philos. of Style,' § 56, and Grant 
 Allen's 'Physiological .Esthetics,' p. 115, with which cf. Aristotle's ' Rhet- 
 oric,' III. 9. 
 
British Rhetoric. 159 
 
 his thoughts and his imagery still appear to move to the 
 music of the organ. 
 
 25. In some measure it is a consequence of these pecul- 
 iarities, and so far it is the more a duty to allow for them, 
 that the rhetoric of Milton, though wanting in animation, - 
 is unusually superb in its colouring; its very monotony is 
 derived from the sublime unity of the presiding impulse; 
 
 ence it sometimes ascends into eloquence of the high- 
 and sometimes even into the raptures of lyric 
 Btry. The main thing, indeed, wanting to Milton was 
 fhave fallen upon happA- subjects : for, with the excep- 
 tibruof the " XreopagititMjfcthere is not one of his prose 
 works upon a theme of uJHjtersal interest, or perhaps fitted 
 to be the ground-work of aMietorieal display. 
 
 26. Butj as it has happened to Milton sometimes to give 
 us poetry for rhetoric, in one instance he has unfortunately 
 given us rhetoric for poetry. This occurs in the Paradise 
 Lost, where the debates of^(« r fal\n angels are carried on 
 by a degrading process of gladiatorial rhetoric. Nay, even 
 the counsels of God, though not debated to and fro, are, 
 however, expounded rhetorically. This is astonishing ; for 
 no one was better aware than Milton l of the distinction 
 between the discursive and intuitive acts of the mind as 
 apprehended by the old metaphysicians, and the incompati- 
 bility of the former with any but a limitary intellect. 
 This indeed was familiar to all the writers of his day; 
 but, as Mr. Gifford has shown, by a most idle note upon a 
 passage in Massinger, 2 that it is a distinction which has 
 
 1 See the Fifth Book of the Paradise Lost, and passages in his prose 
 writings. — De Q. '".'.- 
 
 2 " It is very difficult to determine the precise meaning which our ances- 
 tors gave to discourse, or to distinguish the line which separates it from 
 reason. Perhaps it indicated a more rapid deduction of consequences from 
 premises than was supposed to he effected hy reason." — Gifford's ed. of 
 Massinger, Vol. I., p. 148. 
 
160 Rhetoric. 
 
 now perished (except indeed in Germany), 1 we shall recall 
 it to the reader's attention. An intuition is any knowledge 
 whatsoever, sensuous or intellectual, which is apprehended 
 immediately : a notion, on the other hand, or product of the 
 discursive faculty, is any knowledge whatsoever which is 
 apprehended mediately. All reasoning is carried on discur- 
 sively ; that is, discurrendo, — by running about to the right 
 and the left, laying the separate notices together, and 
 thence mediately deriving some third apprehension. Now, 
 this process, however grand a characteristic of the human 
 species as distinguished from the brute, is degrading to 
 any supra-human intelligence, divine or angelic, by argu- 
 ing limitation. God must not proceed by steps and the 
 fragmentary knowledge of accretion; in which case at 
 starting he has all the intermediate notices as so many 
 bars between himself and the conclusion, and even at the 
 penultimate. or antepenultimate act he is still short of the 
 truth. God must see; he must intuit, so to speak; and all 
 truth must reach him simultaneously, first and last, with- 
 out succession of time or partition of acts : just as light, 
 before that theory had been refuted by the Satellites of 
 Jupiter, was held not to be propagated in time, but to be 
 here and there at one and the same indivisible instant. 
 Paley, from mere rudeness of metaphysical skill, has talked 
 of the judgment and the judiciousness of God : but this is 
 profaneness, and a language unworthily applied even to an 
 angelic being. To judge, that is to subsume one proposition 
 under another, — to be judicious, that is, to collate the 
 means with the end, — are acts impossible in the Divine 
 nature, and not to be ascribed, even under the licence of a 
 figure, to any being which transcends the limitations of 
 humanity. Many other instances there are in which Milton 
 is taxed with having too grossly sensualized his supernat- 
 
 1 Cf. the essay, ' Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays,' first paragraph. 
 
British Rhetoric. 161 
 
 ural agents j 1 some of which, however, the necessities of the 
 action may excuse; and at the worst they are readily sub- 
 mitted to as having an intelligible purpose — that of bring- 
 ing so mysterious a thing as a spiritual nature or agency 
 within the limits of the representable. But the intellect- 
 ual degradation fixed on his spiritual beings by the rhetori- 
 cal debates is purely gratuitous, neither resulting from the 
 course of the action nor at all promoting it. Making 
 allowances, however, for the original error in the concep- 
 tion, it must be granted that the execution is in the best 
 style. The mere logic of the debate, indeed, is not better 
 managed than it would have been by the House of Com- 
 mons. But the colours of style are grave and suitable to 
 afflicted angels. In the Paradise Regained this is still 
 more conspicuously true : the oratory there, on the part of 
 Satan in the Wilderness, is no longer of a rhetorical cast, 
 but in the grandest style of impassioned eloquence that can 
 be imagined as the fit expression for the movements of an 
 angelic despair; and in particular the speech, on being 
 first challenged by our Saviour, 2 beginning 
 
 " 'Tis true, I am that spirit unfortunate " 
 
 is not excelled in sublimity by any passage in the poem. 
 
 27. Milton, however, was not destined to gather the 
 spolia opima of English rhetoric. Two contemporaries of 
 his own, and whose literary course pretty nearly coincided 
 with his own in point of time, surmounted all competition, 
 and in that amphitheatre became the Protagonistse. These , 
 were Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne; who, if not) 
 absolutely the foremost in the accomplishments of art, 
 were undoubtedly the richest, the most dazzling, and, with 
 reference to their matter, the most captivating, of all rhet- 
 oricians. In them first, and perhaps (if we except occa- 
 sional passages in the German John Paul Bichter) in them 
 
 i As, e.g., in Bk. VI. 2 Bk. I., 1. 358. 
 
162 Rhetoric. 
 
 only, are the two opposite forces of eloquent passion and 
 rhetorical fancy brought into an exquisite equilibrium, — 
 approaching, receding, — attracting, repelling, — blending, 
 separating, — chasing and chased, as in a fugue, — and 
 again lost in a delightful interfusion, so as to create a 
 middle species of composition, more various and stimulat- 
 ing to the understanding than pure eloquence, more grati- 
 fying to the affections than naked rhetoric. Under this 
 one circumstance of coincidence, in other respects their 
 minds were of the most opposite temperament : Sir Thomas 
 Browne, deep, tranquil, and majestic as Milton, silently 
 premeditating and "disclosing his golden couplets," as 
 under some genial instinct of incubation; Jeremy TaylorJ 
 restless, fervid, aspiring, scattering abroad a prodigality of 
 life, not unfolding but creating, with the energy and the 
 " myriad-mindedness " of Shakspere. Where but in Sir T. 
 B. shall one hope to find music so Miltonic, an intonation 
 of such solemn chords as are struck in the following open- 
 ing bar of a passage in the Urn-Burial — "Now, since these 
 bones have rested quietly in the grave under the drums and 
 tramplings of three conquests," &C. 1 What a melodious 
 ascent as of a prelude to some impassioned requiem breath- 
 ing from the pomps of earth, and from the sanctities of the 
 grave ! What a fluctus decumanus of rhetoric ! Time ex- 
 pounded, not by generations or centuries, but by the vast 
 periods of conquests and dynasties ; by cycles of Pharaohs 
 and Ptolemies, Antiochi and Arsacides! And these vast 
 successions of time distinguished and figured by the up- 
 roars which revolve at their inaugurations; by the drums 
 and tramplings rolling overhead upon the chambers of for- 
 gotten dead — the trepidations of time and mortality vexing, 
 
 1 Beginning of Chapter V. More correctly quoted : " Now, since these 
 dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a 
 yard underground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spa- 
 cious buildings above it, and quietly rested under the drums and tramp- 
 lings of three conquests." 
 
British Rhetoric. 163 
 
 at secular intervals, the everlasting sabbaths of the grave ! 
 Show us, pedant, such another strain from the oratory 
 of Greece or Rome ! Eor it is not an Ov pa tovs iv MapaBavt. 
 TeOvr/KOTa.';, 1 or any such bravura, that will make a fit antiph- 
 ony to this sublime rapture. We will not, however, attempt 
 a descant upon the merits of Sir T. Browne after the admi- 
 rable one by Coleridge 1 2 and, as to Jeremy Taylor, we would 
 as readily undertake to put a belt about the ocean as to 
 characterize him adequately within the space at our com- 
 mand. It will please the reader better that he should 
 characterize himself, however imperfectly, by a few speci- 
 mens selected from some of his rarest works: a method 
 which will, at the same time, have the collateral advan- 
 tage of illustrating an important truth in reference to this 
 florid or Corinthian order of rhetoric which we shall have 
 occasion, to notice a little further on : — 
 
 " It was observed by a Spanish confessor that, in persons not very 
 religious, the confessions which they made upon their deathbeds were 
 the coldest, the most imperfect, and with less contrition than all which 
 he had observed them to make in many years before. For, as the 
 canes of Egypt, when they newly arise from their bed of mud and 
 
 1 Demosthenes, ' On the Crown,' § 208. The passage is known as " the 
 Demosthenic oath." Cf. Hermogenes, p. 425; Longinus, 'De Sublimitate,' 
 XVI. ; Quintilian, ' Institutes,' XI. 3, 168 ; and Hume's essay, ' Of Eloquence.' 
 
 2 " Sir Thomas Browne is among my first favorites, rich in various 
 knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imagi- 
 native; often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though 
 doubtless too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic. . He is a quiet and 
 sublime enthusiast, with a strong tiDge of the fantast, — the humorist con- 
 stantly mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting 
 colors in shot silk play upon the main dye. ... In that Hydriotaphia or 
 Treatise upon some Urns dug up in Norfolk— how earthy, how redolent 
 of graves and sepulchres is every line ! You have now dark mould, now a 
 thigh-bone, now a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin ! a fragment of an 
 old tombstone with moss in its hie jacet ; — a ghost or a winding sheet — or 
 the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind ! and the gayest 
 thing you shall meet with shall be a silver nail or a gilt Anno Domini from 
 a perished coffin-top." —Coleridge, ' Literary Kemains,' Vol. II., pp. 413-415. 
 
164 Rhetoric. 
 
 slime of Nilus, start up into an equal and continual length, and unin- 
 terrupted but with few knots, and are strong and beauteous, with great 
 distances and intervals, but, when they are grown to their full length, 
 they lessen into the point of a pyramid, and multiply their knots and 
 joints, interrupting the fineness and smoothness of its body : so are 
 the steps and declensions of him that does not grow in grace. At 
 first, when he springs up from his impurity by the waters of baptism 
 and repentance, he grows straight and strong, and suffers but few 
 interruptions of piety ; and his constant courses of religion are but 
 rarely intermitted, till they ascend up to a full age, or towards the 
 ends of their life ; then they are weak, and their devotions often inter- 
 mitted, and their breaks are frequent, and they seek excuses, and 
 labour for dispensations, and love God and religion less and less, till 
 their old age, instead of a crown of their virtue and perseverance, 
 ends in levity and unprofitable courses,. light and useless as the tufted 
 feathers upon the cane : every wind can play with it and abuse it, but 
 no man can make it useful." 
 
 " If we consider the price that the Son of God paid for the redemp- 
 tion of a soul, we shall better estimate of it than from the weak dis- 
 courses of our imperfect and unlearned philosophy. Not the spoil 
 of rich provinces — not the estimate of kingdoms — not the price of 
 Cleopatra's draught — not anything that was corruptible or perishing; 
 for that which could not one minute retard the term of its own natural 
 dissolution could not be a price for the redemption of one perishing 
 soul. When God made a soul, it was only faciamus hominem ad 
 imaginem nostrum ; he spake the word, and it was done. But, when 
 man had lost his soul, which the spirit of God had breathed into him, 
 it was not so soon recovered. It is like the Resurrection, which hath 
 troubled the faith of many, who are more apt to believe that God made 
 a man from nothing than that he can return a man from dust and 
 corruption. But for this resurrection of the soul, for the re-implacing 
 of the Divine image, for the re-entitling it to the kingdoms of grace 
 and glory, God did a greater work than the creation. He was fain to 
 contract Divinity to a span ; to send a person to die for us who of 
 himself could not die, and was constrained to use rare and mysterious 
 arts to make him capable of dying : He prepared a person instru- 
 mental to his purpose by sending his Son from his own bosom — a 
 person both God and Man, an enigma to all nations and to all sciences ; 
 one that ruled over all the angels, that walked on the pavements of 
 heaven ; whose feet were clothed with stars ; whose understanding is 
 
British Rhetoric. 165 
 
 larger than that infinite space which we imagine in the uncircum- 
 scribed distance beyond the first orb of heaven ; a person to whom 
 felicity was as essential as life to God. This was the only person that 
 was designed in the eternal decrees to pay the price of a soul ; less 
 than this person could not do it. Nothing less than an infinite excel- 
 lence could satisfy for a soul lost to infinite ages, who was to bear the 
 load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God. 
 And yet, if it be possible that Infinite can receive degrees, this is but 
 one-half of the abyss, and I think the lesser." 
 
 "It was a strange variety of natural efficacies that manna should 
 corrupt in twenty-four hours if gathered upon "Wednesday or Thurs- 
 day, and that it should last till forty-eight hours if gathered upon the 
 even of the Sabbath, and that it should last many hundreds of years 
 when placed in the sanctuary by the ministry of the high priest. But 
 so it was in the Jews' religion ; and manna pleased every palate, and 
 it filled all appetites ; and the same measure was a different propor- 
 tion, — it was much, and it was iittle ; as if nature, that it might serve 
 religion, had been taught some measures of infinity, which is every- 
 where and nowhere, filling all things, and circumscribed with nothing, 
 measured by one omer, and doing the work of two ; like the crowns of 
 kings, fitting the brows of Nimrod and the most mighty warrior, and 
 yet not too large for the temples of an infant prince." 
 
 "His mercies are more than we can tell, and they are more than 
 we can feel : for all the world, in the abyss of the Divine mercies, is 
 like a man diving into the bottom of the sea, over whose head the 
 waters run insensibly and unperceived, and yet the weight is vast, and 
 the sum of them immeasurable : and the man is not pressed with the 
 burden, nor confounded with numbers : and no observation is able 
 to recount, no sense sufficient to perceive, no memory large enough to 
 retain, no understanding great enough to apprehend, this infinity. ' ' 
 
 28. These passages are not cited with so vain a purpose 
 as that of furnishing a sea-line for measuring the " sound- 
 less deeps " of Jeremy Taylor, but to illustrate that one 
 remarkable characteristic of his style which we have already 
 noticed, viz. the everlasting strife and fluctuation between 
 his rhetoric and his eloquence, which maintain their alter- 
 nations with force and inevitable recurrence, like the sys- 
 tole and diastole, the contraction and expansion, of some 
 
166 Rhetoric. 
 
 living organ. For this characteristic he was indebted in 
 mixed proportions to his own peculiar style of understand- 
 ing and the nature of his subject. Where the understand- 
 ing is not active and teeming, but possessed and filled by 
 a few vast ideas (which was the case of Milton), there the 
 funds of a varied rhetoric are wanting. On the other 
 hand, where the understanding is all alive with the sub- 
 tlety of distinctions, and nourished (as Jeremy Taylor's 
 was) by casuistical divinity, the variety and opulence of 
 the rhetoric is apt to be oppressive. But this tendency, 
 in the case of Taylor, was happily checked and balanced 
 by the commanding passion, intensity, and solemnity of his 
 exalted theme, which gave a final unity to the tumultuous 
 motions of his intellect. The only very obvious defects of 
 Taylor were in the mechanical part of his art, in the mere 
 technique. He writes like one who never revises, nor tries 
 the effect upon his ear of his periods as musical wholes, and 
 in the syntax and connexion of the parts seems to have 
 been habitually careless of slight blemishes. 
 
 29. Jeremy Taylor 1 died in a few years after the Eesto- 
 
 1 In retracing the history of English rhetoric, it may strike the reader 
 that we have made some capital omissions. But in these he will find we 
 have been governed by sufficient reasons. Shakspere is no doubt a rheto- 
 rician majorum gentium ; but he is so much more that scarcely an instance 
 is to be found of his rhetoric which does not pass by fits into a higher ele- 
 ment of eloquence or poetry. The first and the last acts, for instance, of 
 the Two Noble Kinsmen, — which, in point of composition, is perhaps the 
 most superb work in the language, and beyond all doubt from the loom of 
 Shakspere, — would have been the most gorgeous rhetoric, had they not 
 happened to be something far better. The supplications of the widowed 
 Queens to Theseus, the invocations of their tutelar divinities by Palamon 
 and Arcite, the death of Arcite, &c, are finished in a more elaborate style 
 of excellence than any other almost of Shakspere's most felicitous scenes. 
 In their first intention they were perhaps merely rhetorical ; but the fur- 
 nace of composition has transmuted their substance. Indeed, specimens of 
 mere rhetoric would be better sought in some of the other great dramatists, 
 who are under a less fatal necessity of turning everything they touch into 
 the pure gold of poetry. Two other writers, with great original capflcities 
 for rhetoric, we have omitted in our list from separate considerations : we 
 
British Rhetoric. 167 
 
 ration. Sir Thomas Browne, though at that time nearly 
 thirty years removed from the first surreptitious edition 1 of 
 his Beligio Medici, lingered a little longer. But, when' 
 both were gone, it may be truly affirmed that the great 
 oracles of rhetoric were finally silenced. South and Bar- 
 row, indeed, were brilliant dialecticians in different styles ; 
 - but, after Tillotson, with his meagre intellect, his low key 
 of feeling, and the smug and scanty draperies of his style, 
 had announced a new era, English divinity ceased to be 
 the racy vineyard that it had been in the ages of ferment 
 and struggle. Like the soil of Sicily (vide Sir H. Davy's 
 Agricultural Chemistry), it was exhausted for ever by the 
 tilth and rank fertility of its golden youth. 
 
 30. Since then great passions and high thinking have 
 either disappeared from literature altogether, or thrown 
 themselves into poetic forms which, with the privilege of 
 a masquerade, are allowed to assume the spirit of past ages, 
 and to speak in a key unknown to the general literature. 
 At all events, no pulpit oratory of a rhetorical cast for up- 
 mean Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Bacon. The first will hardly have been 
 missed by the general reader ; for his finest passages are dispersed through 
 the body of his bulky history, and are touched with a sadness too pathetic, 
 and of too personal a growth, to fulfil the conditions of a gay rhetoric as 
 an art rejoicing in its own energies. With regard to Lord Bacon the case 
 is different. He had great advantages for rhetoric, being figurative and 
 sensuous (as great thinkers must always be), and having no feelings too 
 profound, or of a nature to disturb the balance of a pleasurable activity ; 
 but yet, if we except a few letters, and parts of a few speeches, he never 
 comes forward as a rhetorician. The reason is that, being always in quest 
 of absolute truth, he contemplates all subjects, not through the rhetorical 
 fancy, which is most excited by mere seeming resemblances, and such as 
 can only sustain themselves under a single phasis, but through the philo- 
 sophic fancy, or that which rests upon real analogies. Another unfavour- 
 able circumstance, arising in fact out of the plethoric fulness of Lord B.'s 
 mind, is the short-hand style of his composition, in which the connexions 
 are seldom fully developed. It was the lively mot of a great modern poet, 
 speaking of Lord B.'s Essays, "that they are not plants, but seeds; not 
 oaks, but acorns." — De Q. 
 
 1 Published in 1642. The authorized edition appeared the following year. 
 
168 Rhetoric. 
 
 wards of a century has been able to support itself when 
 stripped of the aids of voice and action. Robert Hall and 
 Edward Irving, when printed, exhibit only the spasms of 
 weakness. Nor do we remember one memorable burst of 
 rhetoric in the pulpit eloquence of the last one hundred and 
 fifty years, with the exception of a fine oath ejaculated by 
 a dissenting minister of Cambridge, who, when appealing 
 for the confirmation of his worcls to the grandeur of man's 
 nature, swore, — By this and by the other, and at length, 
 "By the Iliad, by the Odyssey," as the climax in a long 
 bead-roll of speciosa miracula which he had apostrophized as 
 monuments of human power. As to Foster, he has been pre- 
 vented from preaching by a complaint affecting the throat; 
 but, judging from the quality of his celebrated Essays, he 
 could never have figured as a truly splendid rhetorician; 
 for the imagery and ornamental parts of his Essays have 
 evidently not grown up in the loom, and concurrently with 
 the texture of the thoughts, but have been separately added 
 afterwards, as so much embroidery or fringe. 
 
 31. Politics, meantime, however inferior in any shape 
 to religion as an ally of real eloquence, might yet, either 
 when barbed by an interest of intense personality, or on 
 the very opposite footing of an interest not personal but 
 comprehensively national, have irritated the growth of 
 rhetoric such as the spirit of the times allowed. In one 
 conspicuous instance it did so ; but generally it had little 
 effect, as a cursory glance over the two last centuries will 
 show. 
 
 32. In the reign of James I. the House of Commons first 
 became the theatre of struggles truly national. The rela- 
 tions of the People and the Crown were then brought to 
 issue, and, under shifting names, continued sub judice from 
 that time to 1688; and from that time, in fact, a corre- 
 sponding interest was directed to the proceedings of 
 Parliament. But it was not until 1642 that any free 
 
British Rhetoric. 169 
 
 communication was made of what passed in debate. Dur- 
 ing the whole of the Civil War the speeches of the leading 
 members upon all great questions were freely published in 
 occasional pamphlets. Xaturally they were very much 
 compressed; but enough survives to show that, from the 
 agitations of the times and the religious gravity of the 
 House, no rhetoric was sought or would have been toler- 
 ated. In the reign of Charles II., judging from such 
 records as we have of the most critical debates (that pre- 
 served by Locke, for instance, through the assistance of his 
 patron Lord Shaftesbury), the general tone and standard 
 of Parliamentary eloquence had taken pretty nearly its 
 present form and level. The religious gravity had then 
 given way ; and the pedantic tone, stiffness, and formality 
 of punctual divisions, had been abandoned for the freedom 
 of polite conversation. It was not, however, until the 
 reign of Queen Anne that the qualities and style of parlia- 
 mentary eloquence were submitted to public judgment; this 
 was on occasion of the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, which was 
 managed by members of the House of Commons. The 
 Whigs, however, of that era had no distinguished speakers. 
 On the Tory side, St. John (Lord Bolingbroke) was the 
 most accomplished person in the House. His style may be 
 easily collected from his writings, which have all the air of 
 having been dictated without premeditation ; and the effect 
 of so much showy and fluent declamation, combined with 
 the graces of his manner and person, may be inferred from 
 the deep impression which they seem to have left upon Lord 
 Chesterfield, himself so accomplished a judge, and so famil- 
 iar with the highest efforts of the next age in Pulteney and 
 Lord Chatham. With two exceptions, indeed, to be noticed 
 presently, Lord Bolingbroke came the nearest of all par- 
 liamentary orators who have been particularly recorded to 
 the ideal of a fine rhetorician. It was no disadvantage to 
 him that he was shallow, being so luminous and trans- 
 
170 Rhetoric. 
 
 parent; and the splendour of his periodic diction, with his 
 fine delivery, compensated his defect in imagery. Sir 
 Eobert "Walpole was another Lord Londonderry; like him, 
 an excellent statesman, and a first-rate leader of the House 
 of Commons, but in other respects a plain unpretending 
 man; and, like Lord Londonderry, he had the reputation 
 of a blockhead with all eminent blockheads, and of a man 
 of talents with those who were themselves truly such. 
 " When I was very young, " says Burke, " a general fashion 
 told me I was to admire some of the writings against that 
 minister; a little more maturity taught me as much to 
 despise them." Lord Mansfield, "the fluent Murray," was, 
 or would have been but for the counteraction of law, 1 
 another Bolingbroke. " How sweet an Ovid was in Murray 
 lost!" says Pope 2 ; and, if the comparison were suggested 
 with any thoughtful propriety, it ascribes to Lord Mans- 
 field the talents of a first-rate rhetorician. Lord Chatham 
 had no rhetoric at all, any more than Charles Fox of the 
 next generation : both were too fervent, too Demosthenic, 
 and threw themselves too ardently upon the graces of 
 nature. Mr. Pitt came nearer to the idea of a rhetorician, 
 in so far as he seemed to have more artifice ; but this was 
 only in the sonorous rotundity of his periods, which were 
 cast in a monotonous mould, — for in other respects he 
 would have been keenly alive to the ridicule of rhetoric in 
 a First Lord of the Treasury. 
 
 33. All these persons, whatever might be their other 
 differences, agreed in this, — that they were no jugglers, 
 but really were that which they appeared to be, and never 
 struggled for distinctions which did not naturally belong 
 
 1 See essay on ' Style,' § 90. 
 
 2 Misquoted and misapplied. The passage in the ' Dunciad,' Bk. IV., 11. 
 169, 170, is a satire on the English practice of composing Latin verses ; 
 
 " How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast ! 
 How many Martiais were in Pult'ney lost I " 
 
British Rhetoric. 171 
 
 to them. But next upon the roll comes forward an abso- 
 lute charlatan : a charlatan the most accomplished that can 
 ever have figured upon so intellectual a stage. This was 
 Sheridan, a mocking-bird through the entire scale, from 
 the highest to the lowest note of the gamut; in fact, to 
 borrow a coarse word, the mere impersonation of humbug. 
 Even as a wit, he has been long known to be a wholesale 
 plagiarist ; and the exposures of his kind biographer, Mr. 
 Moore, exhibit him in that line as the most hide-bound and 
 sterile of performers, lying perdu through a whole evening 
 for a natural opportunity, or by miserable stratagem creat- 
 ing an artificial one, for exploding some poor starveling 
 jest; and in fact sacrificing to this petty ambition, in a 
 degree never before heard of, the ease and dignity of his 
 life. But it is in the character of a rhetorical orator that 
 he, and his friends on his behalf, have put forward the 
 hollowest pretensions. In the course of the Hastings trial, 
 upon the concerns of paralytic Begums, and mouldering 
 queens — hags that, if ever actually existing, were no more 
 to us and our British sympathies than we to Hecuba — did 
 Mr. Sheridan make his capital exhibition. The real value 
 of his speech was never at any time misappreciated by the 
 judicious; for his attempts at the grand, the pathetic, and 
 the sentimental had been continually in the same tone of 
 falsetto and horrible fustian. Burke, however, who was 
 the most double-minded person in the world, cloaked his 
 contempt in hyperbolical flattery; and all the unhappy 
 people who have since written lives of Burke adopt the 
 whole for gospel truth. Exactly in the same vein of tumid 
 inanity is the speech which Mr. Sheridan puts into the 
 mouth of Rolla the Peruvian. This the reader may chance 
 to have heard upon the stage ; or, in default of that good 
 luck, we present him with the following fragrant twaddle 
 from one of the Begummiads, 1 which has been enshrined in 
 
 1 Speech of June 13, 1788. 
 
172 Rhetoric. 
 
 the praises (si quid sua carmina possunt) of many worthy 
 critics. The subject is Filial Piety. , 
 
 "Filial piety," Mr. Sheridan said, "it was impossible bywords to 
 describe, but description by words was unnecessary. It was that duty 
 which they all felt and understood, and which required not the powers 
 of language to explain. It was in truth more properly to be called a 
 principle than a duty. It required not the aid of memory ; it needed 
 not the exercise of the understanding ; it awaited not the slow delib- 
 erations of reason : it flowed spontaneously from the fountain of our 
 feelings ; it was involuntary in our natures ; it was a quality of our 
 being, innate and coeval with life, which, though afterwards cherished 
 as a passion, was independent of our mental powers ; it was earlier 
 than all intelligence in our souls ; it displayed itself in the earliest 
 impulses of the heart, and was an emotion of fondness that returned 
 in smiles of gratitude the affectionate solicitudes, the tender anxieties, 
 the endearing attentions experienced before memory began, but which 
 were not less dear for not being remembered. It was the sacrament 
 of nature in our hearts, by which the union of the parent and child 
 was sealed and rendered perfect in the community of love ; and which, 
 strengthening and ripening with life, acquired vigour from the under- 
 standing, and was most lively and active when most wanted." 
 
 Now, we put it to any candid reader whether the above 
 Birmingham ware might not be vastly improved by one 
 slight alteration, viz. omitting the two first words, and 
 reading it as a conundrum. Considered as rhetoric, it is 
 evidently fitted " to make a horse sick " ; but, as a conun- 
 drum in the Lady's Magazine, we contend that it would 
 have great success. 
 
 34. How it aggravates the disgust with which these paste- 
 diamonds are now viewed to remember that they were 
 paraded in the presence of Edmund Burke; nay — credite 
 posteri ! — in jealous rivalry of his genuine and priceless 
 jewels ! Irresistibly, one is reminded of the dancing efforts 
 of Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs 
 against the native grace of the Vicar of Wakefield's family: 
 — " The ladies of the town strove hard to be equally easy, 
 
British Rhetoric. 173 
 
 "but without success. They swam, sprawled, languished, 
 "and frisked; but all would not do. The gazers, indeed, 
 " owned that it was fine ; but neighbour Elamborough ob- 
 served that Miss Livy's feet seemed as pat to the music 
 "as its echo." Of Goldsmith it was said in his epi- 
 taph, — JVi7 tetigit quod non ornavit 1 .• of the Drury Lane 
 rhetorician it might be said with equal truth, — Nil tetigit 
 quod nonfuco adulteravit. But avaunt, Birmingham! Let 
 us speak of a great man. 
 
 35. All hail to Edmund Burke, the supreme writer of his 
 century, the man of the largest and finest understanding! 
 Upon that word, understanding, we lay a stress; for oh! 
 ye immortal donkeys who have written "about him and 
 about him," with what an obstinate stupidity have ye 
 brayed away for one third of a century about that which 
 ye are pleased to call his "fancy." Fancy in your throats, 
 ye miserable twaddlers! As if Edmund Burke were the 
 man to play with his fancy for the purpose of separable 
 ornament ! He was a man of fancy in no other sense than 
 as Lord Bacon was so, and Jeremy Taylor, and as all large 
 and discursive thinkers are and must be : that is to say, the 
 fancy which he had in common with all mankind, and very 
 probably in no eminent degree, in him was urged into 
 unusual activity under the necessities of his capacious 
 understanding. His great and peculiar distinction was that 
 he viewed all objects of the understanding under more rela- 
 tions than other men, and under more complex relations. 
 According to the multiplicity of these relations, a man is/ 
 said to have a large understanding ; according to their sub- 
 tlety, a fine one; and in an angelic understanding all things, 
 would appear to be related to all. Now, to apprehend and 
 detect more relations, or to pursue them steadily, is a 
 process absolutely impossible without the intervention of 
 
 1 The epitaph is by Johnson, and reads as follows : "Nullum fere scri- 
 bendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit." 
 
174 Rhetoric. 
 
 physical analogies. To say, therefore, that a man is a great 
 thinker, or a fine thinker, is but another expression for say- 
 ing that he has a schematizing (or, to use a plainer but less 
 accurate expression, a figurative) understanding. In that 
 sense, and for that purpose, Burke is figurative : but, under- 
 stood, as he has been understood by the long-eared race of 
 his critics, not as thinking in and by his figures, but as 
 deliberately laying them on by way of enamel or after- 
 ornament, — not as incarnating, 1 but simply as dressing his 
 thoughts in imagery, — so understood, he is not the Burke 
 of reality, but a poor fictitious Burke, modelled after the 
 poverty of conception which belongs to his critics. 
 
 36. It is true, however, that in some rare cases Burke did 
 indulge himself in a pure rhetorician's use of fancy; con- 
 sciously and profusely lavishing his ornaments for mere 
 purposes of effect. Such a case occurs, for instance, in that 
 admirable picture of the degradation of Europe where he 
 represents the different crowned heads as bidding against 
 each other at Basle for the favour and countenance of Begi- 
 cide. Others of the same kind there are in his ever- 
 memorable letter on the Duke of Bedford's attack upon him 
 in the House of Lords 2 ; and one of these we shall here 
 cite, disregarding its greater chance for being already famil- 
 iar to the reader, upon two considerations : first, that it has 
 all the appearance of being finished with the most studied 
 regard to effect; and, secondly, for an interesting anecdote 
 connected with it which we have never seen in print, but 
 for which we have better authority than could be produced 
 perhaps for most of those which are. The anecdote is that 
 Burke, conversing with Dr. Lawrence and another gentleman 
 on the literary value of his own writings, declared that the 
 particular passage in the entire range of his works which 
 had cost him the most labour, and upon which, as tried by 
 
 1 See the essay on ' Style,' § 92. 
 
 2 ' A Letter to a Noble Lord,' Works (Boston, 1871), Vol. V. 
 
British Rhetoric. 175 
 
 a certain canon of his own, his labour seemed to himself to 
 have been the most successful, was the following : — 
 
 37. After an introductory paragraph, which may be thus 
 abridged, — "The Crown has considered me after long ser- 
 "vice. The Crown has paid the Duke of Bedford by 
 " advance. He has had a long credit for any service which 
 " he may perform hereafter. He is secure, and long may he 
 " be secure in his advance, whether he performs any services 
 "or not. His grants are engrafted on the public law of 
 " Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. 
 " They are guarded by the sacred rule of prescription. The 
 " learned professors of the rights of man, however, regard 
 " prescription not as a title to bar all other claim, but as a 
 "bar against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an 
 " immemorial possession to be no more than an aggravated 
 " injustice, " — there follows the passage in question : — 
 
 " Such are their ideas, such their religion, and such their law. But, 
 as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted struct- 
 ure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies, of 
 that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress 
 at once and a temple {templum in modum arcis *) , shall stand inviolate 
 on the brow of the British Sion ; as long as the British monarchy, not 
 more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the 
 proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt 
 with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers ; as long as this 
 awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land : so long 
 the mounds and dykes of the low fat Bedford Level 2 will have nothing 
 to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long 
 as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects the lords and 
 commons of this realm, — the triple cord which no man can break ; 
 the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation ; the 
 firm guarantees of each other's being and each other's rights ; the joint 
 and several securities, each in its place and order, for every kind and 
 
 1 Tacitus of the Temple of Jerusalem. (This is Burke's own note, though 
 not so printed by De Quincey. The Latin quotation should form part of it.) 
 
 2 "Bedford Level": — A rich tract of land so called in Bedfordshire. — 
 De Q. 
 
176 Rhetoric. 
 
 every quality of property and of dignity, — as long as these endure, 
 so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, and we are all safe together : the 
 high from the blights of envy and the spoliation of rapacity ; the low 
 from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. 
 Amen ! and so he it : and so it will be 
 
 1 Dum Domus iEnese Capitoli immobile saxum 
 Aceolet, imperiumque Pater Romanus habebit.' " 
 
 This was the sounding passage which Burke alleged as the 
 chef-d'oeuvre of his rhetoric ; and the argument upon which 
 he justified his choice is specious, if not convincing. He 
 laid it down as a maxim of composition that every passage 
 in a rhetorical performance which was brought forward 
 prominently, and relied upon as a key (to use the language 
 of war) in sustaining the main position of the writer, ought 
 to involve a thought, an image, and a sentiment ; and such 
 a synthesis he found in the passage which we have quoted. 
 This criticism, over and above the pleasure which it always 
 gives to hear a great man's opinion of himself, is valuable 
 as showing that Burke, because negligent of trivial inaccu- 
 racies, was not at all the less anxious about the larger pro- 
 prieties and decorums (for this passage, confessedly so 
 laboured, has several instances of slovenliness in trifles), 
 and that in the midst of his apparent hurry he carried out 
 a jealous vigilance upon what he wrote, and the eye of a 
 person practised in artificial effects. 
 
 38. An ally of Burke's upon East Indian politics ought 
 to have a few words of notice, not so much for any power 
 that he actually had as a rhetorician, but because he is 
 sometimes reputed such. This was Sir Philip Francis, 
 who, under his early disguise of Junius, had such a success 
 as no writer of libels ever will have again. It is our pri- 
 vate opinion that this success rested upon a great delusion 
 which has never been exposed. The general belief is that 
 Junius was read for his elegance; we believe no such thing. 
 The pen of an angel would not, upon such a theme as per- 
 
British Rhetoric. 177 
 
 sonal politics, have upheld the interest attached to Junius, 
 had there been no other cause in co-operation. Language, 
 after all, is a limited instrument; and it must be remem- 
 bered that Junius, by the extreme narrowness of his range, 
 which went entirely upon matters of fact and personal inter- 
 ests, still further limited the compass of that limited 
 instrument. For it is only in the expression and manage- 
 ment of general ideas that any room arises for conspicuous 
 elegance. The real truth is this: the interest in Junius 
 travelled downwards ; he was read in the lower ranks, because 
 in London it speedily became known that he was read with 
 peculiar interest in the highest. This was already a mar- 
 vel; for newspaper patriots, under the signatures of Pub- 
 licola, Brutus, and so forth, had become a jest and a byword 
 to the real practical statesman ; and any man at leisure to 
 write for so disinterested a purpose as " his country's good " 
 was presumed of course to write in a garret. But here for 
 the first time a pretended patriot, a Junius Brutus, was read 
 even by statesmen, and read with agitation. Is any man 
 simple enough to believe that such a contagion could extend 
 to cabinet ministers and official persons overladen with 
 public business on so feeble an excitement as a little reputa- 
 tion in the art of constructing sentences with elegance, — 
 an elegance which, after all, excluded eloquence and every 
 other positive quality of excellence? That this can have 
 been believed shows the readiness with which men swallowed 
 marvels. The real secret was this : — Junius was read with 
 the profoundest interest by members of the cabinet, who 
 would not have paid half-a-crown for all the wit and ele- 
 gance of this world, simply because it was most evident that 
 some traitor was amongst them, and that, either directly by 
 one of themselves, or through some abuse of his confidence 
 by a servant, the secrets of office were betrayed. The cir- 
 cumstances of this breach of trust are now fully known; 
 and it is readily understood why letters which were the 
 
178 Rhetoric. 
 
 channel for those perfidies should interest the ministry of 
 that day in the deepest degree. The existence of such an 
 interest, but not its cause, had immediately become known; 
 it descended, as might be expected, amongst all classes; 
 once excited, it seemed to be justified by the real merits of 
 the letters; which merit again, illustrated by its effects, 
 appeared a thousand times greater than it was ; and, finally, 
 this interest was heightened and sustained by the mystery 
 which invested the author. How much that mystery availed 
 in keeping alive the public interest in Junius is clear from 
 this fact, — that since the detection of Junius as Sir Philip 
 Francis the Letters have suddenly declined in popularity, 
 and are no longer the saleable article which once they were. 1 
 39. In fact, upon any other principle, the continued tri- 
 umph of Junius, and his establishment as a classical author, 
 is a standing enigma. One talent, undoubtedly, he had in 
 a rare perfection — the talent of sarcasm. He stung like a 
 scorpion. But, besides that such a talent has a narrow 
 application, an interest of personality cannot be other than 
 fugitive, take what direction it may ; and malignity cannot 
 embalm itself in materials that are themselves perishable. 
 Such were the materials of Junius. His vaunted elegance 
 was, in a great measure, the gift of his subject; general 
 terseness, short sentences, and a careful avoiding of all 
 awkward construction — these were his advantages. And 
 from these he would have been dislodged by a higher sub- 
 ject, or one that would have forced him out into a wider 
 compass of thought. Ehetorician he was none, though he 
 has often been treated as such; for, without sentiment, 
 without imagery, without generalisation, how should it be 
 possible for rhetoric to subsist? It is an absolute fact that 
 Junius has not one principle, aphorism, or remark of a gen- 
 eral nature in his whole armoury ; not in a solitary instance 
 did his barren understanding ascend to an abstraction or 
 
 1 Cf. De Quincey's ' London Reminiscences,' chap. v. 
 
British Rhetoric. 179 
 
 general idea, but lingered for ever in the dust and rubbish of 
 individuality, amongst the tangible realities of things and 
 persons. Hence the peculiar absurdity of that hypothesis 
 which discovered Junius in the person of Burke. The 
 opposition was here too pointedly ludicrous between Burke, 
 who exalted the merest personal themes into the dignity of 
 philosophic speculations, and Junius, in whose hands the 
 very loftiest dwindled into questions of person and party. 
 40. Last of the family of rhetoricians, and in a form of 
 rhetoric as florid as the age could bear, came Mr. Canning. 
 " Sufficit," says a Roman author, "in una civitate esse unum 
 rhetor em." But, if more were in his age unnecessary, in 
 ours they would have been intolerable. Three or four Mr. 
 Cannings would have been found a nuisance; indeed, the 
 very admiration which crowned his great displays mani- 
 fested of itself the unsuitableness of his style to the atmos- 
 phere of public affairs ; for it was of that kind which is 
 offered to a young lady rising from a brilliant performance 
 on the pianoforte. Something, undoubtedly, there was of 
 too juvenile an air, too gaudy a flutter of plumage, in Mr. 
 Canning's more solemn exhibitions; but much indulgence 
 was reasonably extended to a man who in his class was so 
 complete. He was formed for winning a favourable atten- 
 tion by every species of popular fascination. To the eye he 
 recommended himself almost as much as the Bolingbroke of 
 a century before ; his voice, and his management of it, were 
 no less pleasing ; and upon him, as upon St. John, the air of 
 a gentleman sat with a native grace. Scholarship and liter- 
 ature, as far as they belong to the accomplishments of a 
 gentleman, he too brought forward in the most graceful 
 manner; and, above all, there was an impression of honour, 
 generosity, and candour, stamped upon his manner, agree- 
 able rather to his original character than to the wrench which 
 it had received from an ambition resting too much on mere 
 personal merits. What a pity that this " gay creature of 
 
180 Rhetoric. 
 
 the elements " had not taken his place contentedly, where 
 nature had assigned it, as one of the ornamental performers 
 of the time ! His station was with the lilies of the field, 
 which toil not, neither do they spin. He should have 
 thrown himself upon the admiring sympathies of the world 
 as the most dazzling of rhetorical artists, rather than have 
 challenged their angry passions in a vulgar scuffle for 
 power. In that case he would have been alive at this hour 
 [1828] ; he would have had a perpetuity of that admiration 
 which to him was as the breath of his nostrils ; and would 
 not, by forcing the character of rhetorician into an incon- 
 gruous alliance with that of trading politician, have run the 
 risk of making both ridiculous. 
 
 viii. Rhetoric of the Continent. 
 
 41. In thus running over the modern history of Rhetoric, 
 we have confined ourselves to the Literature of England: 
 the Rhetoric of the Continent would demand a separate 
 notice, and chiefly on account of the French pulpit orators. 
 For, laying them aside, we are not aware of any distinct 
 body of rhetoric, properly so called, in Modern Literature. 
 Four continental languages may be said to have a literature 
 regularly mounted in all departments, viz. the French, Ital- 
 ian, Spanish, and German; but each of these has stood 
 under separate disadvantages for the cultivation of an orna- 
 mented rhetoric. In France, whatever rhetoric they have 
 (for Montaigne, though lively, is too gossiping for a 
 rhetorician) arose in the age of Louis XIV. ; since which 
 time the very same development of science and public busi- 
 ness operated there as in England to stifle the rhetorical 
 impulses, and all those analogous tendencies in arts and in 
 manners which support it. Generally it may be assumed 
 that rhetoric will not survive the age of the ceremonious 
 in manners and the gorgeous in costume. An unconscious 
 
Rhetoric of the Continent. 181 
 
 sympathy binds together the various forms of the elaborate 
 and the fanciful, under every manifestation. Hence it is 
 that the national convulsions by which modern France has 
 been shaken produced orators, — Mirabeau, Isriard, the Abbe 
 Maury, — but no rhetoricians. Florian, Chateaubriand, 
 and others, who have written the most florid prose that the 
 modern taste can bear, are elegant sentimentalists, some- 
 times maudlin and semi-poetic, sometimes even eloquent, 
 but never rhetorical. There is no eddying about their own 
 thoughts; no motion of fancy self- sustained from its own 
 activities; no flux and reflux of thought, half meditative, 
 half capricious ; but strains of feeling, genuine or not, sup- 
 ported at every step from the excitement of independent 
 external objects. 
 
 42. With respect to the German Literature the case is 
 very peculiar. A chapter upon German Rhetoric would be 
 in the same ludicrous predicament as Van Troil's chapter 
 on the snakes of Iceland, which delivers its business in one 
 summary sentence, announcing that — snakes in Iceland 
 there are none. Rhetoric, in fact, or any form of orna- 
 mented prose, could not possibly arise in a literature in 
 which prose itself had no proper existence till within these 
 seventy years. Lessing was the first German who wrote 
 prose with elegance ; and even at this day a decent prose 
 style is the rarest of accomplishments in Germany. We 
 doubt, indeed, whether any German has written prose with 
 grace unless he had lived abroad (like Jacobi, who composed 
 indifferently in French and German), or had at least culti- 
 vated a very long acquaintance with English and French 
 models. Frederick Schlegel was led by his comprehensive 
 knowledge of other literatures to observe this singular defect 
 in that of his own country. Even he, however, must have 
 fixed his standard very low, when he could praise, as else- 
 where he does, the style of Kant. Certainly in any litera- 
 ture where good models of prose existed Kant would be 
 
182 Rhetoric. 
 
 deemed a monster of vicious diction, so far as regards the 
 construction of his sentences. He does not, it is true, write 
 in the hybrid dialect which prevailed up to the time of our 
 George the First, when every other word was Latin with a 
 German inflexion; but he has in perfection that obtuseness 
 which renders a German taste insensible to all beauty in the 
 balancing and structure of periods, and to the art by which 
 a succession of periods modify each other. Every German 
 regards a sentence in the light of a package, and a package 
 not for the mail-coach but for the waggon, into which his 
 privilege is to crowd as much as he possibly can. Having 
 framed a sentence, therefore, he next proceeds to pack it, 
 which is effected partly by unwieldy tails and codicils, but 
 chiefly by enormous parenthetic involutions. All qualifica- 
 tions, limitations, exceptions, illustrations, are stuffed and 
 violently rammed into the bowels of the principal proposi- 
 tion. That all this equipage of accessaries is not so 
 arranged as to assist its own orderly development no more 
 occurs to a German as any fault than that in a package of 
 shawls or of carpets the colours and patterns are not fully 
 displayed. To him it is sufficient that they are there. And 
 Mr. Kant, 1 when he has succeeded in packing up a sentence 
 which covers three close-printed octavo pages, stops to draw 
 his breath with the air of one who looks back upon some 
 brilliant and meritorious performance. Under these disad- 
 vantages it may be presumed that German rhetoric is a 
 nonentity; but these disadvantages would not have arisen 
 had there been a German bar or a German senate with any 
 public existence. In the absence of all forensic and sena- 
 torial eloquence no standard of good prose style — nay, 
 which is more important, no example of ambition directed 
 to such an object — has been at any time held up to the pub- 
 lic mind in Germany; and the pulpit style has been always 
 either rustically negligent or bristling with pedantry. 
 1 Cf. essay on ' Style,' § 25, and see Appendix. 
 
Rhetoric of the Continent. 183 
 
 43. These disadvantages with regard to public models of 
 civil eloquence have in part affected the Italians. The few- 
 good prose writers of Italy have been historians ; and it is 
 observable that no writers exist in the department of what 
 are called Moral Essayists, — a class which, with us and the 
 French, were the last depositaries of the rhetorical faculty 
 when depressed to its lowest key. Two other circumstances 
 may be noticed as unfavourable to an Italian rhetoric: one, 
 to which we have adverted before, in the language itself, 
 which is too loitering for the agile motion and the to 
 ayxio-Tpcxfrov 1 of rhetoric; and the other in the constitution 
 of the national mind, which is not reflective nor remarkably 
 fanciful, the two qualities most indispensable to rhetori&r— 
 As a proof of the little turn for reflection which there is in 
 the Italian mind, we may remind the reader that they have 
 no meditative or philosophic poetry, 2 such as that of our 
 Young, Cowper, Wordsworth, &c, — a class of poetry which 
 existed very early indeed in the English Literature (e.g., 
 Sir J. Davies, Lord Brooke, Henry More, &c), and which 
 in some shape has arisen at some stage of almost every 
 European literature. 
 
 44. Of the Spanish rhetoric, a priori, we should have 
 augured well ; but the rhetoric of their pulpit in past times, 
 which is all that we know of it, is vicious and unnatural; 
 whilst, on the other hand, for eloquence profound and heart- 
 felt, measuring it by those heart-stirring proclamations 
 issued in all quarters of Spain during 1808-9, 8 the national 
 
 I* 
 
 i § 13; note. 
 
 2 The nearest approach to reflective poetry which we ourselves remember 
 in Italian literature lies amongst the works of Salvator Rosa (the great 
 painter) — where, however, it assumes too much the character of satire. — 
 De Q. It is singular that De Quincey makes no reference to Ugo Foscolo, 
 who died in exile near London the year before this essay was written. 
 Foscolo's ' Dei Sepolchri ' is reflective in character. 
 
 8 On the occasion of Napoleon's nominating his brother, Joseph Bona- 
 parte, King of Spain. 
 
184 Rhetoric. 
 
 capacity must be presumed to be of the very highest 
 order. 
 
 45. We are thus thrown back upon the French pulpit 
 orators as the only considerable body of modern rhetoricians 
 out of our own language. No writers are more uniformly 
 praised; none are more entirely neglected. This is one of 
 those numerous hypocrisies so common in matters of taste, 
 where the critic is always ready with his good word as the 
 readiest way of getting rid of the subject. To blame might 
 be hazardous; for blame. demands reasons; but praise enjoys 
 a ready dispensation from all reasons and from all discrimi- 
 nation. Superstition, however, as it is under which the 
 French rhetoricians hold their reputation, we have no 
 thought of attempting any disturbance to it in so slight and 
 incidental a notice as this. Let critics by all means con- 
 tinue to invest them with every kind of imaginary splendour. 
 Meantime let us suggest, as a judicious caution, that French 
 rhetoric should be praised with a reference only to its own 
 narrow standard ; for it would be a most unfortunate trial of 
 its pretensions to bring so meagre a style of composition into 
 a close comparison with the gorgeous opulence of the Eng- 
 lish rhetoric of the same century. Under such a comparison 
 two capital points of weakness would force themselves upon 
 the least observant of critics : first, the defect of striking 
 -imagery; and, secondly, the slenderness of the thoughts. 
 The rhetorical manner is supported in the French writers 
 chiefly by an abundance of ohs and ahs; by interrogatories, 
 apostrophes, and startling exclamations ; all which are mere 
 mechanical devices for raising the style; but in the sub- 
 stance of the composition, apart from its dress, there is 
 nothing properly rhetorical. The leading thoughts in all 
 pulpit eloquence, being derived from religion, and in fact 
 the common inheritance of human nature, if they cannot be 
 novel, for that very reason cannot be undignified; but for 
 the same reason they are apt to become unaffecting and trite 
 
Rhetoric of the Continent. 185 
 
 unless varied and individualized by new infusions of thought 
 and feeling. The smooth monotony of the leading religious 
 topics, as managed by the French orators, receives under the 
 treatment of Jeremy Taylor at each turn of the sentence a 
 new flexure, or what may be called a separate articulation 1 ; 
 old thoughts are surveyed from novel stations and under 
 various angles ; and a field absolutely exhausted throws up 
 eternally fresh verdure under the fructifying lava of burn- 
 ing imagery. Human life, for example, is short; human 
 happiness is frail; how trite, how obvious a thesis ! Yet, 
 in the beginning of the Holy Dying, upon that simplest of 
 themes how magnificent a descant! Variations the most 
 original upon a ground the most universal, and a sense 
 of novelty diffused over truths coeval with human life! 
 Finally, it may be remarked of the imagery in the French 
 rhetoric that it is thinly sown, commonplace, deficient in 
 splendour, and above all merely ornamental ; that is to say, 
 it does no more than echo and repeat what is already said 
 in the thought which it is brought to illustrate ; whereas in 
 Jeremy Taylor and in Burke it will be found usually to 
 
 1 We may take the opportunity of noticing what it is that constitutes 
 the peculiar and characterizing circumstances in Burke's manner of com- 
 position. It is this: that under his treatment every truth, be it what it 
 may, every thesis of a sentence, grows in the very act of unfolding it. 
 Take any sentence you please from Dr. Johnson, suppose, and it will be 
 found to contain a thought, good or bad, fully preconceived. Whereas in 
 Burke, whatever may have been the preconception, it receives a new deter- 
 mination or inflexion at every clause of the sentence. Some collateral 
 adjunct of the main proposition, some temperament or restraint, some 
 oblique glance at its remote affinities, will invariably be found to attend 
 the progress of his sentences, like the spray from a waterfall, or the scin- 
 tillations from the iron under the blacksmith's hammer. Hence, whilst a 
 writer of Dr. Johnson's class seems only to look back upon his thoughts, 
 Burke looks forward, and does in fact advance and change his own station 
 concurrently with the advance of the sentences. This peculiarity is no 
 doubt in some degree due to the habit of extempore speaking, but not to 
 that only. — De Q. This penetrating criticism is repeated, in much the 
 same language, in the essay on ' Conversation.' 
 
186 Rhetoric. 
 
 extend and amplify the thought, or to fortify it by some 
 indirect argument of its truth. Thus, for instance, in the 
 passage above quoted from Taylor upon the insensibility of 
 man to the continual mercies of God, at first view the mind 
 is staggered by the apparent impossibility that so infinite a 
 reality, and of so continual a recurrence, should escape our 
 notice ; but the illustrative image, drawn from the case of 
 a man standing at the bottom of the ocean, and yet insensi- 
 ble, to that world of waters above him, from the uniformity 
 and equality of its pressure, flashes upon us with a sense of 
 something equally marvellous in a case which we know to 
 be a physical fact. We are thus reconciled to the proposi- 
 tion by the same image which illustrates it. 1 
 
 ix. Miscellaneous Criticisms of Whately's 'Rhetoric.' 
 
 46. In a single mechanical quality of good writing, that 
 is in the structure of their sentences, the Trench rhetori- 
 cians, in common with French writers generally of that age, 
 are superior to ours. This is what in common parlance is 
 expressed (though inaccurately) by the word style, and is 
 the subject of the third part of the work before us. Dr. 
 Whately; however, somewhat disappoints us by his mode 
 of treating it. He alleges, indeed, with some plausibility, 
 that his subject bound him to consider style no further than 
 as it was related to the purpose of persuasion. But, besides 
 that it is impossible to treat it with effect in that muti- 
 lated section, even within the limits assumed we are not 
 able to trace any outline of the law or system by which 
 Dr. Whately has been governed in the choice of his topics. 
 We find many very acute remarks delivered, but all in a 
 
 1 Not so ! We now understand that the case used as an illustration is a 
 physical impossibility, since men who dive to the bottom of the ocean are 
 sensible, painfully sensible, to the pressure of the water above them. We 
 accept the figure as appropriate only by making due allowance for the 
 imperfect state of science in the time at which Taylor lived. 
 
Criticisms of Whately's '■Rhetoric.'' 187 
 
 desultory way, which leave the reader no means of judging 
 how much of the ground has been surveyed and how much 
 omitted. We regret also that he has not addressed himself 
 more specifically to the question of English style, — a sub- 
 ject which has not yet received the comprehensive discus- 
 sion which it merits. In the age of our great rhetoricians 
 it is remarkable that the English language had never been 
 made an object of conscious attention. No man seems to 
 have reflected that there was a wrong and a right in the 
 choice of words, in the choice of phrases, in the mechanism 
 of sentences, or even in the grammar. Men wrote elo- 
 quently, because they wrote feelingly; they wrote idiomat- 
 ically, because they wrote naturally and without affectation ; 
 but, if a false or acephalous structure of sentence, if a 
 barbarous idiom or an exotic word happened to present 
 itself, no writer of the seventeenth century seems to have 
 had any such scrupulous sense of the dignity belonging to 
 his own language as should make it a duty to reject it or 
 worth his while to remodel a line. The fact is that verbal 
 criticism had not as yet been very extensively applied even 
 to the classical languages; the Scaligers, Casaubon, and 
 Salmasius, were much more critics on things than critics 
 philologically. However, even in that age the French 
 writers were more attentive to the cultivation of their 
 mother tongue than any other people. It is justly remarked 
 by Schlegel that the most worthless writers amongst the 
 French as to matter generally take pains with their diction; 
 or perhaps it is more true to say that with equal pains in 
 their language it is more easy to write well than in one of 
 greater compass. It is also true that the French are indebted 
 for their greater purity from foreign idioms to their much 
 more limited acquaintance with foreign literature. Still, 
 with every deduction from the merit, the fact is as we have 
 said ; and it is apparent not only by innumerable evidences 
 in the concrete, but by the superiority of all their abstract 
 
188 Rhetoric. 
 
 auxiliaries in the art of writing. We English even at this 
 day have no learned grammar of our language; nay, we 
 have allowed the blundering attempt in that department of 
 an imbecile stranger (Lindley Murray) x to supersede the 
 learned (however imperfect) works of our own Wallis, 
 Lowth, &c. ; we have also no sufficient dictionary; and we 
 have no work at all, sufficient or insufficient, on the phrases 
 and idiomatic niceties of our language, corresponding to the 
 works of Vaugelas z and others for the French. 
 
 47. Hence an anomaly not found perhaps in any litera- 
 ture but ours, — that the most eminent English writers do 
 not write their mother tongue without continual violations 
 of propriety. With the single exception of William Words- 
 worth, who has paid an honourable attention to the purity 
 and accuracy of his English, we believe that there is not 
 one celebrated author of this day who has written two 
 pages consecutively without some flagrant impropriety in 
 the grammar (such as the eternal confusion of the preterite 
 with the past participle, confusion of verbs transitive with 
 intransitive, &c), or some violation more or less of the 
 vernacular idiom. If this last sort of blemish does not 
 occur so frequently in modern books, the reason is that since 
 Dr. Johnson's time the freshness of the idiomatic style has 
 been too frequently abandoned for the lifeless mechanism 
 of a style purely bookish and artificial. 
 
 48. The practical judgments of Dr. Whately are such as 
 will seldom be disputed. Dr. Johnson, for his triads and 
 his antithetic balances, he taxes more than once with a 
 plethoric and tautologic tympany of sentence, and in the 
 following passage with a very happy illustration : — " Sen- 
 
 1 Murray was born in Pennsylvania, and received his education in 
 Philadelphia and New York. He removed to England in 1784. His gram- 
 mar, written for a young ladies' seminary at York, appeared in 1795. (CI. 
 the essay, ' The English Language,' § 8.) 
 
 2 C. F. de Vaugelas, ' Remarques sur la langue francoise ' (Paris : 1647). 
 
Criticisms of Whately's '■Rhetoric' 189 
 
 "tences which might have been expressed as simple ones 
 "are expanded into complex ones by the addition of clauses 
 " which add little or nothing to the sense, and which have 
 "been compared to the false handles and key -holes with 
 " which furniture is decorated, that serve no other purpose 
 " than to correspond to the real ones. Much of Dr. Johnson's 
 "writings is chargeable with this fault." 
 
 49. We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson, 
 published immediately after his death, in which, amongst 
 other instances of desperate tautology, the author quotes 
 the well-known lines from the Doctor's imitation of 
 Juvenal — 
 
 " Let observation, with extensive view, 
 Survey mankind from China to Peru," 
 
 and contends with some reason that this is saying in effect, 
 — " Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind 
 "extensively." Certainly Dr. Johnson was the most faulty 
 writer in this kind of inanity that ever has played tricks 
 with language. 1 On the other hand, Burke was the least 
 so; and we are petrified to find him described by Dr. 
 Whately as a writer " qui variare eupit rem prodigialiter 
 imam," and as on that account offensive to good taste. The 
 understanding of Burke was even morbidly impatient of 
 tautology; progress and motion, everlasting motion, was a 
 mere necessity of his intellect. We will venture to offer a 
 king's ransom for one unequivocal case of tautology from 
 
 1 The following illustration, however, from Dr. Johnson's critique on 
 Prior's Solomon, is far from a happy one : " He had infused into it much 
 " knowledge and much thought; had often polished it to elegance, digni- 
 "Jied it with splendour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity ; he 
 "perceived in it many excellences, and did not perceive that it wanted 
 " that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging 
 " attention and alluring curiosity." The parts marked in italics are those 
 to which Dr. Whately would object as tautologic. Yet this objection can 
 hardly be sustained ; the ideas are all sufficiently discriminated ; the fault is 
 that they are applied to no real corresponding differences in Prior. — Dk Q. 
 
190 Rhetoric. 
 
 the whole circle of Burke's writings. The principium indis- 
 cernibilium, upon which Leibnitz affirmed the impossibility 
 of finding any two leaves of a tree that should be mere 
 duplicates of each other in what we might call the palmistry 
 of their natural markings, may be applied to Burke as safely 
 as to nature: no two propositions, we are satisfied, can be 
 found in him which do not contain a larger variety than is 
 requisite to their sharp discrimination. 
 
 50. Speaking of the advantages for energy and effect in 
 the licence of arrangement open to the ancient languages, 
 especially to the Latin, Dr. Whately cites the following sen- 
 tence from the opening of the 4th Book of Q. Curtius : — 
 Darius, tanti modo exercitus rex, qui, triumphantis magis guam 
 dimieantis more, curru sublimis inierat prcelium, per loca quce 
 prope immensis agminibus compleverat, jam inania et ingenti 
 solitudine vasta, fugiebat. " The effect, " says he, " of the con- 
 cluding verb, placed where it is, is most striking." 1 The 
 sentence is far enough from a good one ; but, confining our- 
 selves to the sort of merit for which it is here cited as a 
 merit peculiar to the Latin, we must say that the very same 
 position of the verb, with a finer effect, is attainable, and in 
 fact often attained, in English sentences ; see, for instance, 
 the passage in Eichard's soliloquy beginning — Now is the 
 winter of our discontent, and ending, In the deep bosom of the 
 ocean buried. See also another at the beginning of Hooker's 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, on the thanklessness of the labour em- 
 ployed upon the foundations of truth ; which, says he, like 
 those of buildings," are in the bosom of the earth concealed." 
 The fact is that the common cases of inversion, such as the 
 suspension of the verb to the end, and the anticipation of 
 the objective case at the beginning, are not sufficient illus- 
 
 1 We wish that, in so critical a notice of an effect derived from the 
 fortunate position of a single word, Dr. Whately had not shocked our ears 
 by this hideous collision of a double " is," — " where it is, is." Dreadful I 
 -De Q. 
 
Criticisms of Whately's '■Rhetoric.'' 191 
 
 trations of the Latin structure. All this can be done as 
 well by the English. It is not mere power of inversion, 
 but of self-intrication, and of self-dislocation, which marks 
 the extremity of the artificial structure; that power by 
 which a sequence of words that naturally is directly consec- 
 utive commences, intermits, and reappears at a remote part 
 of the sentence, like what is called drake-stone on the 
 surface of a river. In this power the Greek is almost as 
 much below the Latin as all modern languages ; and in this, 
 added to its elliptic brevity of connexion and transition, 
 and to its wealth in abstractions, " the long-tailed words in 
 osity and ation," lie the peculiar capacities of the Latin for 
 rhetoric. 
 
 51. Dr. Whately lays it down as a maxim in rhetoric that 
 " elaborate stateliness is always to be regarded as a worse 
 "fault than the slovenliness and languor which accompany a 
 "very loose style." But surely this is a rash position. 
 Stateliness the most elaborate, in an absolute sense, is no 
 fault at all; though it may happen to be so in relation to a 
 given subject, or to any subject under given circumstances. 1 
 " Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of 
 his lords." Reading these words, who would not be justly 
 offended in point of taste had his feast been characterised 
 by elegant simplicity? Again, at a coronation, what can 
 be more displeasing to a philosophic taste than a pretended 
 
 1 " Far be it from me to say one word in praise of those — people of so 
 narrow a sensibility ! — who imagine that a simple (that is, according to 
 many tastes, an unelevated and unrhythmical) style — take, for instance, 
 an Addisonian or a Swiftian style — is unconditionally good. Not so: all 
 depends upon the subject; and there is a style, transcending these and all 
 other modes of simplicity, by infinite degrees, and, in the same proportion, 
 impossible to most men — the rhythmical— the continuous— what, in French, 
 is called the soutenu — which, to humbler styles, stands in the relation of 
 an organ to a shepherd's pipe. This also finds its justification in its 
 subject; and the subject which can justify it must be of a correspond- 
 ing quality — loftier — and, therefore, rare." — 'London Reminiscences,' 
 chap. iii. 
 
192 Rhetoric. 
 
 chastity of ornament, at war with the very purposes of a 
 solemnity essentially magnificent? An imbecile friend of 
 ours, in 1825, brought us a sovereign of a new coinage: 
 "Which," said he, "I admire, because it is so elegantly 
 simple." This, he flattered himself, was thinking like &■ 
 man of taste. But mark how we sent him to the right 
 about : " And thai, weak-minded friend, is exactly the thing 
 which a coin ought not to be : the duty of a golden coin is 
 to be as florid as it can, rich with Corinthian ornaments, 
 and as gorgeous as a peacock's tail." So of rhetoric. 
 Imagine that you read these words of introduction, " And 
 on a set day Tullms Cicero returned thanks to Ccesav on 
 behalf of Marcus Marcellus, " what sort of a speech is reason- 
 ably to be expected? The whole purpose being a festal and 
 ceremonial one, thanksgiving its sole burden first and last, 
 what else than the most "elaborate stateliness " ? If it 
 were not stately, and to the very verge of the pompous, 
 Mr. Wolf would have had one argument more than he had, 
 and a better than any he has produced, for suspecting the 
 authenticity of that thrice famous oration. 1 
 
 52. In the course of his dissertation on style, Dr. Whately 
 very needlessly enters upon the thorny question of the 
 quiddity, or characteristic difference, of poetry as distin- 
 guished from prose. 2 We could much have wished that he 
 had forborne to meddle with a qucestio vexata of this nature, 
 
 1 Cf. the essay on Charles Lamb. 
 
 2 "As distinguished from prose " : — Here is one of the many instances 
 in which a false answer is prepared beforehand by falsely shaping the 
 question. The accessary circumstance, as " distinguished from prose," 
 already prepares a false answer by the very terms of the problem. Poetry 
 cannot be distinguished from prose without presupposing the whole 
 question at issue. Those who deny that metre is the characteristic dis- 
 tinction of poetry deny, by implication, that prose can be truly opposed to 
 poetry. Some have imagined that the proper opposition was between 
 poetry and science ; but, suppose that this is an imperfect opposition, and 
 suppose even that there is no adequate opposition, or counterpole, this is 
 no more than happens in many other cases. One of two poles is often 
 without a name, even where the idea is fully assignable in analysis. But 
 
Criticisms of Whately's 'Rhetoric' 193 
 
 both because in so incidental and cursory a discussion it 
 could not receive a proper investigation, and because Dr. 
 Whately is apparently not familiar with much of what has 
 been written on that subject. On a matter so slightly dis- 
 cussed we shall not trouble ourselves to enter farther than 
 to express our astonishment that a logician like Dr. Whately 
 should have allowed himself to deliver so nugatory an 
 argument as this which follows : — " Any composition in 
 " verse (and none that is not) is always called, whether good 
 " or bad, a poem, by all who have no favourite hypothesis to 
 "maintain." And the inference manifestly is that it is 
 rightly so called. Now, if a man has taken up any fixed 
 opinion on the subject, no matter whether wrong or right, 
 and has reasons to give for his opinion, this man comes 
 under the description of those who have a favourite hypoth- 
 esis to maintain. It follows, therefore, that the only class 
 of people whom Dr. Whately will allow as unbiassed judges 
 on this question — a question not of fact, but of opinion — 
 are those who have, and who profess to have, no opinion at 
 all upon the subject, or, having one, have no reasons for it. 
 But, apart from this contradiction, how is it possible that 
 Dr. Whately should, in any ease, plead a popular usage of 
 speech as of any weight in a philosophic argument? Still 
 more, how is it possible in this case, where the accuracy of 
 the popular usage is the very thing in debate, so that, if 
 pleaded at all, it must be pleaded as its own justification? 
 Alms-giving, and nothing but alms-giving, is universally 
 called charity, and mistaken for the Charity of the Script- 
 ures, by all who have no favourite hypothesis to maintain, 
 — i.e. by all the inconsiderate. But Dr. Whately will 
 hardly draw any argument from this usage in defence of 
 that popular notion. 
 
 at all events the expression, as "distinguished from prose" is a subtle 
 instance of a petitio principti.— De Q. "Poetry is not the proper an- 
 tithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to 
 metre." — Coleridge, 'Literary Kemains,' Vol. 2, p. 7. 
 
194 Rhetoric. 
 
 53. In speaking thus freely of particular passages in Dr. 
 Whately's book, we are so far from meaning any disrespect 
 to him that, on the contrary, if we had not been impressed 
 with the very highest respect for his talents by the aeute- 
 ness and originality which illuminate every part of his 
 book, we could not have allowed ourselves to spend as much 
 time upon the whole as we have in fact spent upon single 
 paragraphs. In reality, there is not a section of his work 
 which has not furnished us with occasion for some profitable 
 speculations; and we are, in consequence, most anxious to 
 see his Logic, — which treats a subject so much more impor- 
 tant than Rhetoric, and so obstinately misrepresented that it 
 would delight us much to anticipate a radical exposure of 
 the errors on this subject taken up from the days of Lord 
 Bacon. It has not fallen in our way to quote much from 
 Dr. Whately totidem verbis; our apology for which will be 
 found in the broken and discontinuous method of treatment 
 by short sections and paragraphs which a subject of this 
 nature has necessarily imposed upon him. Had it coincided 
 with our purpose to go more into detail, we could have 
 delighted our readers with some brilliant examples of philo- 
 sophical penetration, applied to questions interesting from 
 their importance or difficulty with the happiest effect. As 
 it is, we shall content ourselves with saying that in any 
 elementary work it has not been our fortune to witness a 
 rarer combination of analytical acuteness with severity of 
 judgment ; and, when we add that these qualities are recom- 
 mended by a scholarlike elegance of manner, we suppose it 
 hardly necessary to add that Dr. Whately's is incomparably 
 the best book of its class since Campbell's Philosophy of 
 Rhetoric. 
 
 Note. — In what is said at the beginning of this paper of the true 
 meaning of the Entbymeme, as determined by Faceiolati, we must be 
 understood with an exclusive reference to Rhetoric. In Logic the old 
 acceptation cannot be disturbed. — Db Q. 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 i. Innovations in Language. 
 
 1. No language is stationary, except in rude and early- 
 periods of society. The languages of nations like the Eng- 
 lish and Trench, walking in the van of civilization, having 
 popular institutions, and taking part in the business of the 
 earth with morbid energy, are placed under the action of 
 causes that will not allow them any respite from change. 
 Neologism, in revolutionary times, is not an infirmity of 
 caprice, seeking (to use the proverb of Cervantes) "for bet- 
 ter bread than is made of wheat, " but is a mere necessity 
 of the unresting intellect. New ideas, new aspects of old 
 ideas, new relations of objects to each other, or to man — 
 the subject who contemplates those objects, — absolutely 
 insist on new words. And it would not be a more idle mis- 
 conception to find a disease in the pains of growth than to 
 fancy a decay of vernacular purity in the multitude of verbal 
 coinages which modern necessities of thought and action 
 are annually calling forth on the banks of the Thames and 
 the Seine. 
 
 2. Such coinages, however, do not all stand upon the 
 same basis of justification. 1 Some are regularly formed 
 from known roots upon known analogies ; others are formed 
 licentiously. Some again meet a real and clamorous neces- 
 
 i See, on this subject generally, Campbell's ' Philosophy of Rhetoric,' 
 
 Bk. II., chaps. 1-3. 
 
 195 
 
196 Language. 
 
 sity of the intellect; others are fitted to gratify the mere 
 appetite for innovation. They take their rise in various 
 sources, and are moulded with various degrees of skill. 
 Let us throw a hasty glance on the leading classes of these 
 coinages, and of the laws which appear to govern them, or 
 of the anomalies with which they are sometimes associated. 
 There are also large cases of innovation in which no process 
 of coinage whatever is manifested, but perhaps a simple res- 
 toration of old words, long since obsolete in literature and 
 good society, yet surviving to this hour in provincial usage, 
 or, again, an extension and emancipation of terms here- 
 tofore narrowly restricted to a technical or a professional 
 use — as we see exemplified in the word ignore; which, 
 until very lately, was so sacred to the sole use of grand juries 
 that a man would have been obscurely suspected by a police- 
 man, and would indeed have suspected himself, of some- 
 thing like petty larceny in forcing it into any general and 
 philosophic meaning, — which, however, it has now assumed, 
 with little offence to good taste, and with yeoman service 
 to the intellect. Other cases, again, there are, and at pres- 
 ent far too abundant, in which the necessities of social inter- 
 course, and not unfrequently the necessities of philosophic 
 speculation, are provisionally supplied by slang, and the 
 phraseology that is born and bred in the streets. The 
 market-place and the highway, the forum and the trivium, 
 are rich seed-plots for the sowing and the reaping of many 
 indispensable ideas. That a phrase belongs to the slang 
 dictionary is certainly no absolute recommendation; some- 
 times such a phrase may be simply disgusting from its 
 vulgarity, without adding anything to the meaning or to 
 the rhetorical force. How shocking to hear an official dig- 
 nitary saying (as but yesterday was heard) " What on earth 
 could the clause mean?" Yet neither is it any safe ground 
 of absolute excommunication even from the sanctities of 
 literature that a phrase is entirely a growth of the street. 
 
Innovations in Language. 197 
 
 The word humbug, for instance, rests upon a rich and com- 
 prehensive basis : it cannot be rendered adequately either 
 by German or by Greek, the two richest of human languages j 
 and without this expressive word we should all be disarmed 
 for one great case, continually recurrent, of social enormity. 
 A vast mass of villainy, that cannot otherwise be reached 
 by legal penalties, or brought within the rhetoric of scorn, 
 would go at large with absolute impunity, were it not through 
 the stern Khadanianthian aid of this virtuous and inexorable 
 word. 
 
 3. Meantime, as it would not suit the purposes of a sketch 
 to be too systematic in the treatment of a subject so inex- 
 haustible as language and style, neither would it be within 
 the limits of just proportion that I should be too elaborate 
 in rehearsing beforehand the several avenues and classes of 
 cases through which an opening is made for new words 
 amongst ourselves or the French. I will select such cases 
 for separate notice as seem most interesting or most season- 
 able. 1 But, previously, as a proper mode of awakening the 
 reader into giving relief and just prominence to the subject, 
 I will point attention to the varying scale of appreciation 
 applied to the diction and the national language, as a ground 
 of national distinction and honour, by the five great intel- 
 lectual nations of ancient and modern history: viz. the 
 Greeks, the Romans, the French, the English, and the Ger- 
 mans. In no country, except one, is such a preface more 
 requisite than in England, where it is strange enough that, 
 whilst the finest models of style exist, and sub-consciously 
 operate effectively as sources of delight, the conscious valua- 
 tion of style is least perfectly developed. 
 
 1 This portion of the projected essay was never completed. See Appen- 
 dix. 
 
198 Language. 
 
 ii. National Appreciation of Language — The Greeks. 
 
 4. Every nation has reason to feel interested in the pre- 
 tensions of its own native language, in the original qual- 
 ity of that language or characteristic kind of its powers, 
 and in the particular degree of its expansions at the period 
 in question. Even semi-barbarous tribes sometimes talk 
 grandiloquently on this head, and ascribe to uncultivated 
 jargons a fertility or a range of expressiveness quite incom- 
 patible with the particular stage of social development 
 which the national capacities have reached. Not only in 
 spite of its barbarism, but oftentimes in mere virtue of its 
 barbarism, we find a language claiming, by its eulogists, to 
 possess more than ordinary powers of picturesque expres- 
 sion. Such a claim is continually put forward on behalf of 
 the Celtic languages, — as, for instance, the Armoric, the 
 Welsh, the Irish, the Manx, the Gaelic. Such a claim is 
 put forward also for many oriental languages. Yet in most 
 of these cases there is a profound mistake committed, and 
 generally the same mistake. Without being strictly bar- 
 barous, all these languages are uncultured and rude in a 
 degree corresponding to the narrow social development of 
 the races who speak them. These races are precisely in 
 that state of imperfect expansion, both civilly and intellect- 
 ually, under which the separation has not fully taken place 
 between poetry and prose. Their social condition is too 
 simple and elementary to require much cultivation of intel- 
 lectual- topics. Little motive exists for writing, unless on 
 occasions of poetic excitement. The subdued colouring, 
 therefore, of prose has not yet been (to speak physiologi- 
 cally) secreted. And the national diction has the appear- 
 ance of being more energetic and sparkling simply because 
 it is more inflated, — the chastities of good taste not having 
 yet been called forth by social necessities to disentangle the 
 separate forms of impassioned and non-impassioned compo- 
 
The Greeks. 199 
 
 sition. The Kalmuck Tartars, according to a German 
 traveller, viz. Bergmann, long resident amongst them, 
 speak in rapturous terms of their own language 1 ; but it is 
 probable that the particular modes of phraseology which 
 fascinate their admiration are precisely those which a more 
 advanced civilisation, and a corresponding development of 
 taste, would reject as spurious. Certainly, in the case of a 
 language and a literature likely to be much in advance of 
 the Kalmuck, — viz. the Arabic at the era of Mahomet, — 
 we find this conjecture realized. The Koran is held by the 
 devout Mahomedan to be the most admirable model of 
 composition; but exactly those ornaments of diction or of 
 imagery which he regards as the jewels of the whole are 
 most entirely in the childish taste of imperfect civilisation. 
 That which attracts the Arab critic or the Persian is most 
 of all repulsive to the masculine judgment of the European. 
 
 5. Barbarism, in short, through all degrees, generates its 
 own barbaresque standards of taste, and nowhere so much 
 as in the great field of diction and ornamental composition. 
 A high civilisation is an indispensable condition for devel- 
 oping the full powers of a language; and it is equally a 
 condition for developing the taste which must preside over 
 the appreciation of diction and style. The elder civilisa- 
 tions of Egypt and of Asiatic empires are too imperfectly 
 known at this day to furnish any suggestions upon the sub- 
 ject. The earliest civilisation that offers a practical field 
 of study to our own age is the superb one of Greece. 
 
 6. It cannot be necessary to say that from that memorable 
 centre of intellectual activity have emanated the great 
 models in art and literature which, to Christendom, when 
 recasting her mediaeval forms, became chiefly operative in 
 controlling her luxuriance, and in other negative services, 
 though not so powerful for positive impulse and inspiration. 
 Greece was, in fact, too ebullient with intellectual activity 
 
 i See the note near the close of the essay on Keats. 
 
200 Language. 
 
 — an activity too palestric and purely human — so that the 
 opposite pole of the mind, which points to the mysterious 
 and the spiritual, was, in the agile Greek, too intensely a 
 child of the earth, starved and palsied ; whilst in the Hebrew, 
 dull and inert intellectually, but in his spiritual organs 
 awake and sublime, the case was precisely reversed. Yet, 
 after all, the result was immeasurably in favour of the 
 Hebrew. Speaking in the deep sincerities of the solitary 
 and musing heart, which refuses to be duped by the whis- 
 tling of names, we must say of the Greek — laudatur et alget : 
 he has won the admiration of the human race, he is num- 
 bered amongst the chief brilliancies of earth, but on the 
 deeper and more abiding nature of man he has no hold. He 
 will perish when any deluge of calamity overtakes the 
 libraries of our planet, or if any great revolution of thought 
 remoulds them, and will be remembered only as a generation 
 of flowers is remembered ; with the same tenderness of feel- 
 ing, and with the same pathetic sense of a natural predesti- 
 nation to evanescence. Whereas the Hebrew, by introducing 
 himself to the secret places of the human heart, and sitting 
 there as incubator over the awful germs of the spiritualities 
 that connect man with the unseen worlds, has perpetuated 
 himself as a power in the human system : he is co-enduring 
 with man's race, and careless of all revolutions in literature 
 or in the composition of society. The very languages of 
 these two races repeat the same expression of their intel- 
 lectual differences, and of the differences in their missions. 
 The Hebrew, meagre and sterile as regards the numerical 
 wealth of its ideas, is infinite as regards their power; the 
 Greek, on the other hand, rich as tropic forests in the poly- 
 morphous life, the life of the dividing and distinguishing 
 intellect, is weak only in the supreme region of thought. 
 The Hebrew has scarcely any individuated words. Ask a 
 Hebrew scholar if he has a word for a ball (as a tennis ball, 
 pilalusoria); he says, "Oyes." What is it then? Why, 
 
The Greeks. 201 
 
 lie gives you the word for globe. Ask for orb, for sphere, 
 &c, still you have the same answer; the individual circum- 
 stantiations are swallowed up in the generic outline. But 
 the Greek has a parity of wealth alike in the abstract and 
 the concrete. Even as vocal languages, the Hebrew and the 
 Greek obey the same prevailing law of difference. The 
 Hebrew is a sublime monochord, uttering vague vowel sounds 
 as indistinct and shy as the breathings of an iEolian harp 
 when exposed to a fitful breeze. The Greek is more firmly 
 articulated by consonants, and the succession of its syllables 
 runs through a more extensive compass of sonorous variety 
 than can be matched in any other known language. The 
 Spanish and the Italian, with all the stateliness of their 
 modulation, make no approach to the canorous variety of 
 the sounds of the Greek. 1 Read a passage from almost any 
 Greek poet, and each syllable seems to have been placed in 
 its present position as a relief, and by way of contrast, to 
 the syllable which follows and precedes. 2 
 
 1 The Romans discover something apparently of the same tendency to 
 a yague economy of abstraction. But in them it is merely casual, and 
 dependent on accidental ignorance. Thus, for instance, it is ridiculous to 
 render the Catullian Passer meee puellse by sparrow. As well suppose 
 Lesbia to have fondled a pet hedgehog. Passer, or passerculus, means 
 any little bird whatever. The sternness of the Roman mind disdained to 
 linger upon petty distinctions; or at least until the ages of luxurious 
 refinement had paved the way for intellectual refinements. So, again, 
 malum, or even pomum, does not mean an apple, but any whatever of the 
 larger spherical or spheroidical fruits. A peach, indeed, was described 
 differentially as malum Persicum ; an apricot, had the Romans known it, 
 would have been rendered by malum apricum, or malum, apricatum ; but 
 an apple also, had it been mentioned with any stress of opposition or 
 pointed distinction attached to it, would havebeen described differentially 
 as malum vulgare or malum domesticum. — De Q. 
 
 2 Statements like this seem somewhat extravagant when we reflect that 
 our modern stiff and staccato pronunciation of the ancient Greek is prob- 
 ably a mere caricature of the reality, far removed from the rhythmical 
 glides, the easy modulations, the natural interlockings of vowel and conso- 
 nant which must have characterized the lingual instrument of the cultured 
 Athenians. (Cf . the essay, ' The English Language,' § 10, note.) 
 
202 Language. 
 
 7. Of a language thus and otherwise so divinely endowed 
 the Greeks had a natural right to be proud. Yet were they 
 so? There is no appearance of it : and the reason, no doubt, 
 lay in their insulated position. Having no intellectual inter- 
 course with foreign nations, they had virtually no inter- 
 course at all — none which could affect the feelings of the 
 literary class, or generally of those who would be likely to 
 contemplate language as a subject of aesthetic admiration. 
 Each Hellenic author might be compared with others of his 
 compatriot authors in respect to his management of their 
 common language, but not the language itself compared as 
 to structure or capacities with other languages ; since these 
 other languages (one and all) were in any practical sense 
 hardly assumed to exist. In this there was no arrogance. 
 Aliens, as to country and civil polity, being objects of jeal- 
 ousy in the circumstances of Greece, there could be no reason 
 for abstaining from any designation, however hostile, which 
 might seem appropriate to the relation between the parties. 
 But, in reality, the term barbarians 1 seems, for many ages, 
 to have implied nothing either hostile or disrespectful. By 
 a natural onomatopceia, the Greeks used the iterated sylla- 
 bles barbar to denote that a man was unintelligible in his 
 talk; and by the word barbarian originally it is probable 
 that no sort of reproach was intended, but simply the fact 
 that the people so called spoke a language not intelligible 
 to Greeks. Latterly, the term seems to have been often 
 used as one of mere convenience for classification, indicating 
 the non-Hellenes in opposition to the Hellenes ; and it was 
 not meant to express any qualities whatever of the aliens 
 — simply they were described as being aliens. But in the 
 earliest times it was meant, by the word barbarians, to 
 describe them under the idea of men who were cTtjooyXwTToi, 
 
 1 There is a short note by Gibbon upon this word ; but it adds nothing 
 to the suggestions which every thoughtful person will furnish to himself. 
 -De Q. 
 
The Greeks. 203 
 
 men who, speaking in a tongue different from the Grecian, 
 spoke unintelligibly; and at this day it is not impossible 
 that the Chinese mean nothing more by the seemingly offen- 
 sive term outside barbarians. The mis-translations must be 
 man}* between ourselves and the Chinese ; and the proba- 
 bility is that this reputedly arrogant expression means only 
 " the aliens, or external people, who speak in tongues foreign 
 to China." Arrogant or not arrogant, however, in the mouth 
 of the Greeks, the word barbarians included the whole 
 human race not living in Hellas, or in colonies thrown off 
 from Hellas. 1 Having no temptation or facilities for hold- 
 ing any intellectual intercourse with those who could not 
 communicate through the channel of the Greek language, it 
 followed that the Greeks had no means or opportunity for 
 comparing their own language with the languages of other 
 nations ; and together with this power of mutual comparison 
 fell away the call and excitement to vanity upon that par- 
 ticular subject. Greece was in the absolute insulation of 
 the phoenix, the unique of birds, that dies without having 
 felt" a throb of exultation or a pang of jealousy, because it 
 has exposed its gorgeous plumage and the mysterious solem- 
 nities of its beauty only to the dusky recesses of Thebaic 
 deserts. 
 
 1 In the later periods of Greek Literature, viz. at and after the era of 
 Pericles, when the attention had been long pointed to language, and a 
 more fastidious apprehension had been directed to its slighter shades of dif- 
 ference, the term " barbarous " was applied apparently to uncouth dialects 
 of the Greek language itself. Thus, in the Ajax of Sophocles, Teucer 
 (though certainly talking Greek) is described as speaking barbarously. 
 Perhaps, however, the expression might bear a different construction. 
 But in elder periods it seems hardly possible that the term barbarous 
 could ever have been so used. Sir Edward B. Lytton, in his "Athens," 
 supposes Homer, when describing the Carians by this term, to have meant 
 no more than that they spoke some provincial variety of the Ionic Greek ; 
 hut, applied to an age of so little refinement as the Homeric, I should 
 scarcely think this interpretation admissible. — De Q. 
 
204 Language. 
 
 iii. The Romans. 
 
 8. Not thus were the Romans situated. The Greeks, so 
 profound and immovable was their self-conceit, never in 
 any generation came to regard the Romans with the slight- 
 est tremor of jealousy, as though they were or ever could be 
 rivals in literature. The Roman nobles, as all Greece knew, 
 resorted in youth to Athens as to the eternal well-head of 
 learning and eloquence; and the literary or the forensic 
 efforts of such persons were never viewed as by possibility- 
 efforts of competition with their masters, but simply as 
 graceful expressions of homage to the inimitable by men 
 whose rank gave a value to this homage. Cicero and other 
 Romans of his day were egregiously duped by their own 
 vanity when they received as sincere the sycophantic praises 
 of mercenary Greek rhetoricians. No Greek ever in good 
 faith admired a Roman upon intellectual grounds, except 
 indeed as Polybius did, whose admiration was fixed upon the 
 Roman institutions, not upon their literature : though even 
 in his day the Roman literature had already put forth a mas- 
 culine promise, and in Plautus at least a promise of unbor- 
 rowed excellence. The Greeks were wrong : the Romans had 
 some things in their literature which a Greek could neither 
 have rivalled nor even understood. They had a peculiar 
 rhetoric for example, such as Ovid's in the contest for the 
 arms of Achilles — such as Seneca's, which, to this hour, 
 has never been properly examined, and which not only has 
 no parallel in Grecian literature, but which, strangely 
 enough, loses its whole effect and sense when translated 
 into Greek: so entirely is it Roman by incommunicable 
 privilege of genius. 
 
 9. But, if the Greeks did no justice to their Roman pupils, 
 on the other hand, the Roman pupils never ceased to regard 
 the Greeks with veneration, or to acknowledge them for 
 their masters in literature: they had a foreign literature 
 
The Romans. 205 
 
 before their eyes challenging continual comparison; and 
 this foreign literature was in a language which also chal- 
 lenged comparison with their own. Every Eoman of dis- 
 tinction, after Sylla and Marius, understood Greek, — often 
 talked it fluently, declaimed in it, and wrote books in it. 
 But there is no language without its own peculiar genius, 
 and therefore none without its separate powers and advan- 
 tages. That the Latin language has in excess such an original 
 character, and consequently such separate powers, Romans 
 were not slow to discover. Studying the Greek so closely, 
 they found by continual collation in what quarter lay the 
 peculiar strength of the Latin. And, amongst others, Cicero 
 did himself the greatest honour, and almost redeems the 
 baseness of his political conduct, by the patriotic fervour 
 which he now and then exhibits in defending the claims of 
 his native language and native literature. He maintains, 
 also, more than once, and perhaps with good reason, the 
 native superiority of the Eoman mind to the Grecian in 
 certain qualities of racy humour, &C. 1 
 
 10. Here, viz. in the case of Cicero, we have the first 
 eminent example (though he himself records some elder 
 examples amongst his own countrymen) of a man's standing 
 up manfully to support the pretensions of his mother- 
 tongue. And this might be done in a mere spirit of pugna- 
 cious defiance to the arrogance of another nation, — a spirit 
 which finds matter of quarrel in a straw. But here also we 
 find the first example of a statesman's seriously regarding 
 a language in the light of a foremost jewel amongst the 
 trophies of nationality. 
 
 1 Where, by the way, the vocabulary of aesthetic terms, after all the 
 labours of Ernesti and other German editors, is still far from being under- 
 stood. In particular, the word facetus is so far from answering to its 
 usual interpretation that nostro periculo let the reader understand it as 
 precisely what the French mean by naive. — De Q. 
 
206 Language. 
 
 iv. The French. 
 
 11. Coming forward to our own times, we find sovereign 
 rulers, on behalf of great nations, occasionally raising dis- 
 putes which presume some weak sense of the value and 
 dignity attached to a language. Cromwell, for instance, 
 insisted upon Cardinal Mazarin's surrendering his preten- 
 sion to have the French language used in a particular 
 negotiation; and accordingly Latin was substituted. But 
 this did not argue in Cromwell any real estimation of the 
 English language. He had been weak enough to wish that 
 his own life and annals should be written in Latin rather 
 than in English. The motive, it is true, might be to facil- 
 itate the circulation of the work amongst the literati of the 
 Continent. But vernacular translations would more cer- 
 tainly have been executed all over the Continent in the 
 absence of a Latin original; for this, by meeting the demand 
 of foreigners in part (viz. of learned foreigners), would pro 
 tanto have lessened the motives to such translations. And, 
 apart from this preference of a Latin to a domestic portrait- 
 ure addressing itself originally to his own countrymen, or, 
 if Latin were otherwise the preferable language, apart from 
 Cromwell's preference of a Latin Casaubon to a Latin 
 Milton, in no instance did Cromwell testify any sense of 
 the commanding rank due to English Literature amongst 
 the contemporary 1 Literatures of Christendom, nor any 
 concern for its extension. 
 
 1 At this era, when Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere, and the contemporary 
 dramatists, when Lord Bacon, Selden, Milton, and many of the leading 
 English theologians (Jewel, Hooker, Chilljngworth, and Jeremy Taylor), 
 had appeared — in fact, all the optimates of the English Literature — it 
 must be remembered that the French Literature was barely beginning. 
 Montaigne was the only deceased author of eminence ; Corneille was the 
 only living author in general credit. The reader may urge that already, in 
 the times of Catherine de Medici, there were eminent poets. In the reign 
 of her son Charles IX. were several ; and in the reign of her husband there 
 
The French. 207 
 
 12. In the ease of resisting the French arrogance, Crom- 
 well had seemed to express homage to the language of his 
 country, but in reality he had only regarded the political 
 dignity of his country. A pretension may be lighter than 
 a feather; and yet in behalf of our country we do right to 
 suffer no insolent aggression upon it by an enemy. But 
 this argues no sincere regard for that feather on its own 
 account. We have known a sailor to knock an Italian down 
 for speaking disrespectfully of English tenor voices. The 
 true and appropriate expression of reverence to a language 
 is not by fighting for it as a subject of national rivalry, but, 
 by taking earnest pains to write it with accuracy, practically 
 to display its beauty, and to make its powers available for 
 commensurate ends. Tried by this test, which of the three 
 peoples that walk at the head of civilization — French, -Ger- 
 mans, or English — have best fulfilled the duties of their 
 position? 
 
 13. To answer that the French only have been fully 
 awake to these duties is painful, but too manifestly it is 
 true. The French language possesses the very highest 
 degree of merit,, though not in the very highest mode of 
 merit; it is the unique language of the planet as an instru- 
 ment for giving effect to the powers, and for meeting the 
 necessities, of social gaiety and colloquial intercourse. This 
 is partly the effect, and partly the cause, of the social tem- 
 perament which distinguishes the French: partly follows 
 the national disposition, and partly leads to it. The adap- 
 tation of the language to the people, not perhaps more really 
 prominent in this case than in others, is more conspicuously 
 so; and it may be in a spirit of gratitude for this genial 
 
 was even a celebrated Pleiad of poets. But these were merely court poets ; 
 they had no national name or life, and were already forgotten in the days 
 of Louis XIII. As to German Literature, that was a blank. Germany had 
 then but one tolerable poet, viz. Opitz, whom some people (chiefly his 
 countrymen) honour with the title of the German Dryden ! — De Q. 
 
208 Language. 
 
 co-operation in their language that the French are in a 
 memorable degree anxious to write it with elegance anc 
 correctness. They take a pride in doing so ; and it is remark- 
 able that grammatical inaccuracies, so common amongsl 
 ourselves, and common even amongst our literary people, 
 are almost unknown amongst the educated French. 1 
 
 14. But mere fidelity to grammar would leave a negative 
 impression: the respect which the French show to then 
 language expresses itself chiefly in their way of managing 
 it, — that is, in their attention to style and diction. It is 
 the rarest thing possible to find a French writer erring bj 
 sentences too long, too intricate and loaded with clauses, oi 
 too clumsy in their structure. The very highest qualities 
 of style-are not much within the ideal of French composi- 
 tion ; but in the executive results French prose composition 
 usually reveals an air of finish, of self-restraint under any 
 possible temptation to des longueurs, and of graceful adroit- 
 ness in the transitions. 
 
 1 This the reader might he apt to douht, if he were to judge of French 
 grammar by French orthography. Until recently — that is, through the 
 last thirty years — very few people in France, even of the educated classes, 
 could spell. They spelt by procuration. The compositors of the press held 
 a general power-of-attorney to spell for universal France. A facsimile oi 
 the spelling which prevailed amongst the royal family of France at the 
 time of the elder Revolution is given in Cle'ry's Journal: it is terrific 
 Such forms occur, for instance, as J'avoient (J'avois) for I had : J'tti 
 (etois) for I was. But, in publishing such facts, the reader is not to imag- 
 ine that Cilery meant to expose anything needing concealment. All people 
 of distinction spelled in that lawless way ; and the loyal valet doubtless 
 no more thought it decorous for a man of rank to spell his own spelling 
 than to clean his own shoes or to wash his own linen. " Base is the mat 
 that pays," says Ancient Pistol; "Base is the man that spells," said the 
 French of that century. It would have been vulgar to spell decently ; anc 
 it was not illiterate to spell abominably ; for literary men spelled not at al 
 better; they also spelled by proxy, and by grace of compositors. -De Q. 
 
The Germans. 209 
 
 v. The Germans. 
 
 15. Precisely the reverse of all this is found in the com- 
 positions of the German ; who is the greatest nuisance, in 
 what concerns the treatment of language, that the mind of 
 man is capable of conceiving. Of his language the German 
 is proud, and with reason, for it is redundantly rich. Even 
 in its Teutonic section, it is so rich as to be self-sufficing, 
 and capable, though awkwardly, of dispensing with the 
 Greek and Latin counter-section. This independence of 
 alien resources has sometimes been even practically adopted 
 as the basis of a dictionary, and officially patronized by 
 adoption in the public bureaus. Some thirty years ago the 
 Prussian government was said to have introduced into the 
 public service a dictionary 1 which rejected all words not 
 purely vernacular. Such a word, for instance, as philosophie 
 was not admissible; the indigenous word weltweisheit was 
 held to be not only sufficient, which it really is, but exclu- 
 sively legitimate. Yet, with all this scrupulosity and 
 purism of veneration for his native language, — to which 
 he ascribes every quality of power and beauty, and amongst 
 others — credite posteri ! — sometimes even vocal beauty 2 and 
 euphony, — the true German has no sense of grace or 
 deformity in the management of his language. Style, dic- 
 tion, the construction of sentences, are ideas perfectly with- 
 out meaning to the German writer. If a whole book were 
 made up of a single sentence, all collateral or subordinate 
 ideas being packed into it as parenthetical intercalations, 
 
 1 By Heinze, if I recollect ; and founded partly on that oJ Wolf . — De Q. 
 
 2 Foreigners do not often go so far as this ; and yet an American, in his 
 " Sketches of Turkey" (New York, 1833), characterizes the German (p. 478) 
 not only as a soft and melodious language, but absolutely as " the softest 
 of all European languages." Schiller and Goethe had a notion that it was 
 capable of being hammered into euphony, that it was by possibility malle- 
 able in that respect, but then only by great labour of selection, and as a 
 trick of rope-dancing ingenuity. — De Q. 
 
210 Language. 
 
 — if this single sentence should even cover an acre oi 
 ground, — the true German would see in all that no want oi 
 art, would recognise no opportunities thrown away for the 
 display of beauty. The temple would in his eyes exist, 
 because the materials of the temple — the stone, the lime, 
 the iron, the timber — had been carted to the ground. A 
 sentence, even when insulated and viewed apart for itself, 
 is a subject for complex art : even so far it is capable oi 
 multiform beauty, and liable to a whole nosology of malcon- 
 formations. But it is in the relation of sentences, in what 
 Horace terms their "junctura," that the true life of compo- 
 sition resides. The mode of their nexus, the way in which 
 one sentence is made to arise out of another, and to prepare 
 the opening for a third : this is the great loom in which the 
 textile process of the moving intellect reveals itself and 
 prospers. Here the separate clauses of a period become 
 architectural parts, aiding, relieving, supporting each other. 
 But how can any approach to that effect, or any suggestion 
 of it, exist for him who hides and buries all openings for 
 parts and graceful correspondences in one monotonous con- 
 tinuity of period, stretching over three octavo pages? 
 Kant was a great man, but he was obtuse and deaf as an 
 antediluvian boulder with regard to language and its capaci- 
 ties. He has sentences which have been measured by a 
 carpenter, and some of them run two feet eight by six 
 inches. Now, a sentence with that enormous span is fit 
 only for the use of a megatherium or a pre-Adamite. . Parts 
 so remote as the beginning and the end of such a sentence 
 can have no sensible relation to each other : not much as 
 regards their logic, but none at all as regards their more sen- 
 suous qualities — rhythmus, for instance, or the continuity 
 of metaphor. And it is clear that, if the internal relations 
 of a sentence fade under the extravagant misproportion of 
 its scale, a fortiori must the outer relations. If two figures, 
 or other objects, are meant to modify each other visually 
 
The English. 211 
 
 by means of colour, of outline, or of expression, they must 
 be brought into juxtaposition, or at least into neighbour- 
 hood. A chasm between them, so vast as to prevent the 
 synthesis of the two objects in one co-existing field of vision, 
 interrupts the play of all genial comparison. Periods, and 
 clauses of periods, modify each other, and build up a whole 
 then only when the parts are shown as parts, cohering and 
 conspiring to a common result. But, if each part is sepa- 
 rately so vast as to eclipse the disc of the adjacent parts, 
 then substantially they are separate wholes, and do not 
 coalesce to any joint or complex impression. 1 
 
 vi. The English. 
 
 16. We English in this matter occupy a middle position 
 between the French and the Germans. Agreeably to the 
 general cast of the national character, our tendency is to 
 degrade the value of the ornamental, whenever it is brought 
 before us under any suggestion of comparison or rivalry 
 with the substantial or grossly useful. Viewing the thoughts 
 as the substantial objects in a book, we are apt to regard 
 the manner of presenting these thoughts as a secondary or 
 even trivial concern. The one we typify as the metallic 
 substance, the silver or gold, which constitutes the true 
 value that cannot perish in a service of plate ; whereas the 
 style too generally, in our estimate, represents the mere 
 casual fashion given to the plate by the artist — an adjunct 
 that any change of public taste may degrade into a positive 
 disadvantage. But in this we English err greatly; and by 
 these three capital oversights : — 
 
 17. (1) It is certain that style, or (to speak by the most 
 general expression) the management of language, ranks 
 amongst the fine arts, and is able therefore to yield a sepa- 
 rate intellectual pleasure quite apart from the interest of 
 
 1 Cf. essay on ' Style,' § 25, essay on ' Rhetoric,' § 41, and Appendix. 
 
212 Language. 
 
 the subject treated. So far it is already one error to rate 
 the value of style as if it were necessarily a secondary 01 
 subordinate thing. On the contrary, style has an absolute 
 value, 1 like the product of any other exquisite art, quite 
 distinct from the value of the subject about which it is 
 employed, and irrelatively to the subject ; precisely as the 
 fine workmanship of Scopas the Greek, or of Cellini the 
 Florentine, is equally valued by the connoisseur, whether 
 embodied in bronze or marble, in an ivory or a golden vase. 
 But 
 
 18. (2) If we do submit to this narrow valuation of style, 
 founded on the interest of the subject to which it is minis- 
 terial, still, even on that basis, we English commit a capital 
 blunder which the French earnestly and sincerely escape; 
 for, assuming that the thoughts involve the primary inter- 
 est, still it must make all the difference in the world to the 
 success of those thoughts whether they are treated in the 
 way best fitted to expel the doubts or darkness that may 
 have settled upon them, and, secondly, in cases where the 
 business is not to establish new convictions, but to carry old 
 convictions into operative life and power, whether they are 
 treated in the way best fitted to rekindle in the mind a 
 practical sense of their value. Style has two separate func- 
 tions : first, to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which 
 is obscure to the understanding; secondly, to regenerate the 
 normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has 
 become dormant to the sensibilities. Darkness gathers 
 upon many a theme, sometimes from previous mistreatment, 
 
 1 This is questionable. The ultimate justification of fine workmanship 
 in any art seems to be that it soon or late puts a keener edge on the tools 
 of social progress. From this point of view, the " separate intellectual 
 pleasure," if it is worth anything at all (and in a good many instances of 
 connoisseurship it is notoriously worthless) , consists in the recognition of 
 a finer serviceableness, a nicer and more economical adjustment of means 
 to end, than, in the particular art in question, has hitherto been brought 
 into operation. 
 
The English. 213 
 
 at oftener from original perplexities investing its very 
 a,ture. Upon the style it is, if we take that word in its 
 trgest sense, — upon the skill and art of the developer, — 
 lat these perplexities greatly depend for their illumina- 
 on. Look, again, at the other class of cases, when the 
 ifficulties are not for the understanding but for the practi- 
 il sensibilities as applicable to the services of life. The 
 lbject, suppose, is already understood sufficiently; but it 
 ; lifeless as a motive. It is not new light that is to be 
 ),mmunicated, but old torpor that is to be dispersed. The 
 riter is not summoned to convince, but to persuade, 
 •ecaying lineaments are to be retraced, and faded colouring 
 ) be refreshed. Now, these offices of style are really not 
 ssentially below the level of those other offices attached to 
 le original discovery of truth. He that to an old convic- 
 on, long since inoperative and dead, gives the regeneration 
 lat carries it back into the heart as a vital power of action 
 - he, again, that by new light, or by light trained to flow 
 irough a new channel, reconciles to the understanding a 
 ■uth which hitherto had seemed dark or doubtful — both 
 lese men are really, quoad us that benefit by their services, 
 le discoverers of the truth. Yet these results are amongst 
 le possible gifts of style. Light to see the road, power to 
 ivance along it — such being amongst the promises and 
 roper functions of style, it is a capital error, under the 
 lea of its ministeriality, to undervalue this great organ of 
 te advancing intellect — an organ which is equally impor- 
 int considered as a tool for the culture and popularization, 
 : truth and also (if it had no use at all in that way) as a 
 ode per se of the beautiful 1 and a fountain of intellectual 
 Leasure. The vice of that appreciation which we English 
 Dply to style lies in representing it as a mere ornamental 
 
 1 Query : In the truest sense, are not " all modes per se of the beautiful " 
 id " all modes of popularizing truth " expressions for precisely the same 
 ing? 
 
214 Language. 
 
 accident of written composition — a trivial- embellishmen 
 like the mouldings of furniture, the cornices of ceilings, i 
 the arabesques of tea-urns. On the contrary, it is a produ 
 of art the rarest, subtlest, and most intellectual; and, HI 
 other products of the fine arts, it is then finest when it 
 most eminently disinterested — that is, most conspicuous' 
 detached from gross palpable uses. Yet, in very mar 
 cases, it really has the obvious uses of that gross palpab 
 order; as in the cases just noticed, when it gives light 1 
 the understanding, or power to the will, removing obscuritii 
 from one set of truths, and into another circulating the lif 
 blood of sensibility. In these cases, meantime, the style 
 contemplated as a thing separable from the thoughts; i 
 fact, as the dress of the thoughts — a robe that may be lai 
 aside at pleasure. But 
 
 19. (3) There arises a case entirely different, where sty' 
 cannot be regarded as a dress or alien covering, but whei 
 style becomes the incarnation 1 of the thoughts. The huma 
 body is not the dress or apparel of the human spirit: fi 
 more mysterious is the mode of their union. Call the frvi 
 elements A and B ; then it is impossible to point out A i 
 existing aloof from B, or vice versa. A exists in w 
 through B; B exists in and through A. No profoun 
 observer can have failed to observe this illustrated in tl 
 capacities of style. Imagery is sometimes not the mei 
 alien apparelling of a thought, and of a nature to be detache 
 from the thought, but is the coefficient that, being supe: 
 added to something else, absolutely makes the thought i 
 a third and separate existence. 
 
 20. In this third case, our English tendency to unde 
 value style goes more deeply into error than in the othi 
 two. In those two we simply underrate the enormous se 
 vices that are or might be rendered by style to the interes 
 of truth and human thinking ; but in the third case we £ 
 
 1 See essay on ' Style,' § 92. 
 
The English. 215 
 
 near to abolish a mode of existence. This is not so impos- 
 sible an offence as might be supposed. There are many- 
 ideas in Leibnitz, in Kant, in the schoolmen, in Plato at 
 times, and certainly in Aristotle (as the ideas of antiperis- 
 tasis, entelecheia, &c), which are only to be arrested and 
 realized by a signal effort — by a struggle and a nisus both of 
 reflection and of large combination. Now, where so much 
 depends upon an effort — on a spasmodic strain, — to fail 
 by a hair's breadth is to collapse. For instance, the idea 
 involved in the word transcendental, 1 as used in the critical 
 philosophy, illustrates the metaphysical relations of style. 
 
 1 " Transcendental": — Kant, who was the most sincere, honourable, 
 and truthful of human beings, always understood himself. He hated 
 tricks, disguises, or mystifications, simulation equally with dissimulation ; 
 and his love of the English was built avowedly on their veracity. So far 
 lie has an extra chance of intelligibility. On the other hand, of all men, 
 he had the least talent for explaining himself, or communicating his views 
 bo others. Whenever Kant undertakes to render into popular language 
 bhe secrets of metaphysics, one inevitably thinks of Bardolpb's attempt to 
 analyse and justify the word accommodation; — "Accommodation — that 
 is, when a man is (as they say) accommodated ; or when a man is being 
 whereby he may be thought to be accommodated, which is an excellent 
 thing." There are sometimes Eleusinian mysteries, sealed by nature her- 
 self, the mighty mother, as aporreta, things essentially ineffable and unut- 
 terable in vulgar ears. Long, for instance, he laboured, but vainly he 
 laboured, to render intelligible the scholastic idea of the transcendental. 
 This should have been easy to deal with ; for, on the one side lay the tran- 
 scendent, on the other the immanent, two buoys to map out the channel ; 
 md yet did Kant, throughout his long life, fail to satisfy any one man who 
 ivas not previously and independently in possession of the idea. Difficul- 
 ties of this nature should seem as little related to artifice of style and die- 
 ion as geometrical difficulties ; and yet it is certain that, by throwing the 
 stress and emphasis of the perplexity upon the exact verbal nodus of the 
 problem, a better structure of his sentences would have guided Kant to a 
 readier apprehension of the real shape which the difficulty assumed to the 
 ordinary student. — De Q. Cf . De Quincey's essay, ' On the Miscellaneous 
 Essays of Kant.' 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 i. A History of the English Language needed. 
 
 1. French and English Literature, which have now been 
 in a high state of activity for two entire centuries, and 
 perhaps as nearly as possible have been subject to the same 
 allowance for lulls arising out of civil agitations, cannot 
 reasonably be supposed to have left any nook or shy recess 
 in the broad field of national interest at this day unvisited. 
 Long after the main highway of waters has felt the full 
 power of the tide, channels running far inland, with thou- 
 sands of little collateral creeks, may be still under the very 
 process of filling; for two powers are required to those 
 final effects of the tide, — the general hydrostatic power for 
 maintaining the equilibrium, and also hydraulic power for 
 searching narrow conduits. On the same analogy many 
 human interests, less obvious or less general, may long 
 linger unnoticed, and survive for a time the widest expan- 
 sion of intellectual activity. Possibly the aspects of society 
 must shift materially before even the human consciousness, 
 far less a human interest of curiosity, settles upon them 
 with steadiness enough to light up and vivify their relations. 
 For example, odd as it may seem to us, it is certain that in 
 the Elizabethan age Political Economy was not yet viewed 
 by any mind, — no, not by Lord Bacon's, — as even a possible 
 mode of speculation. The whole accidents of value and its 
 functions were not as yet separated into a distinct conscious 
 216 
 
A History of the English Language needed. 217 
 
 object; nor, if they had been, would it have been supposed 
 possible to trace laws and fixed relations amongst forms 
 apparently so impalpable, and combinations so fleeting. 
 With the growth of society, gradually the same phenomena 
 revolved more and more frequently; something like order 
 and connexion was dimly descried; philosophic suspicion 
 began to stir; observation was steadily applied; reason- 
 ing and disputation ran their circle ; and at last a science 
 was matured — definite as mechanics, though (like that) 
 narrow in its elementary laws. 
 
 2. Thus it is with all topics of general interest. Through 
 several generations they may escape notice ; for there must 
 be an interest of social necessity visibly connected with 
 them before a mere vagrant curiosity will attract culture to 
 their laws. And this interest may fail to arise until society 
 has been made to move through various changes, and human 
 needs have assumed attitudes too commanding and too per- 
 manent to be neglected. The laws of the drama, — that is, 
 of the dramatic fable, — how subtle are they! How imper- 
 ceptible — how absolutely non-existences — in any rude 
 state of society! But let a national theatre arise, let the 
 mighty artist come forward to shake men's hearts with 
 scenic agitations, how inevitably are these laws brightened 
 to the apprehension, searched, probed, analysed. Sint 
 Mcecenates, it has been said, non deerunt (Flacce) Marones. 
 That may be doubted; and nearer to the probabilities it 
 would be to invert the order of succession. But, however 
 this may be, it is certain from manifold experience that 
 invariably there will follow on the very traces and fresh 
 footing of the mighty agent (mighty, but possibly blind) 
 the sagacious theorist of his functions — in the very wake 
 and visible path of the awful iEschylus, or the tear-com- 
 pelling Euripides, producing their colossal effects in alliance 
 with dark forces slumbering in human nature, will step 
 forth the torch-bearing Aristotle, that pure starry intelli- 
 
218 The English Language. 
 
 gence, 1 bent upon searching into those effects, and measur- 
 ing (when possible) those forces. The same age, accordingly, 
 beheld the first pompous exhibitions of dramatic power 
 which beheld also the great speculator arise to trace its limits, 
 proportions, and the parts of its shadowy empire. " I came, 
 I saw, I conquered" — such might have been Aristotle's 
 vaunt in reviewing his own analysis of the Athenian drama; 
 one generation, or nearly so, having witnessed the creation 
 of the Grecian theatre as a fact, and the finest contemplative 
 survey 2 which has yet been taken of the same fact viewed 
 as a problem, — of the dramatic laws, functions, powers, and 
 limits. 
 
 3. No great number of generations, therefore, is requisite 
 for the exhaustion of all capital interests in their capital 
 aspects. And it may be presumed, with tolerable certainty, 
 that by this time the plough has turned up every angle of 
 soil, properly national, alike in England or in France. Not 
 that many parts will not need to be tilled over again, and 
 often absolutely de novo. Much of what has been done has 
 been done so ill that it is as if it had not been done at all. 
 For instance, the history of neither kingdom has yet been 
 written in a way to last, or in a way worthy of the subject. 
 Either it has been slightly written as to research, — witness 
 Hume and Mezerai, Smollett and Pere Daniel (not but some 
 of these writers lay claim to antiquarian merits) ; or written 
 inartificially and feebly as regards effect; or written with- 
 out knowledge as regards the political forces which moved 
 underground at the great eras of our national development. 
 
 4. Still, after one fashion or another, almost every great 
 theme has received its treatment in both English literature 
 and French ; though many are those on which, in the words 
 
 1 " That pure starry intelligence": — Aristotle was sometimes called 
 6 i/oBs, the intellect ; and elsewhere, as Suidas records, he was said to dip 
 his pen into the very intellect and its fountains. — De Q. 
 
 2 In Aristotle's ' Poetics.' 
 
A History of the English Language needed. 219 
 
 of the German adage upon psychology, we may truly affirm 
 that "the first sensible word is yet to be spoken." The soil 
 is not absolutely a virgin soil ; the mine is not absolutely 
 un worked ; although the main body of the precious ore is 
 yet to be extracted. 
 
 5. Meantime, one capital subject there is, and a domestic 
 subject besides, on which, strange to say, neither nation has 
 thought fit to raise any monument of learning and patriot- 
 ism. Rich, at several eras, in all kinds of learning, neither 
 England nor France has any great work to show upon her 
 own vernacular language. Res est in integro : no Hickes in 
 England, no Malesherbes or Menage in France, has chosen 
 to connect his own glory with the investigation and history 
 of his native tongue. And yet each language has brilliant 
 merits of a very different order; and we speak thoughtfully 
 when we say that, confining ourselves to our own, the most 
 learned work which the circumstances of any known or 
 obvious case allow, the work which presupposes the amplest 
 accomplishments of judgment and enormous erudition, 
 would be a History of the English Language, from its 
 earliest rudiments, through all the periods of its growth, 
 to its stationary condition. 1 Great rivers, as they advance 
 and receive vast tributary influxes, change their direction, 
 their character, their very name ; and the pompous inland 
 sea bearing navies on its bosom has had leisure, through a 
 thousand leagues of meandering, utterly to forget and dis- 
 own the rocky mountain bed and the violent rapids which 
 made its infant state unfitted to bear even the light canoe. 
 The analogy is striking between this case and that of the 
 English language. In its elementary period it takes a 
 different name — the name of Anglo-Saxon; and so rude 
 was it and barren at one stage of this rudimental form that 
 
 1 Since De Quincey's time this work has been in great part accom- 
 plished, not by one man but, through a division of labor, by a circle of 
 eminent philologists. 
 
220 The English Language. 
 
 in the Saxon Chronicle we find not more than a few hundred 
 words, perhaps from six to eight hundred words, perpetually 
 revolving, and most of which express some idea in close 
 relation to the state of war. The narrow purposes of the 
 Chronicler may, in part, it is true, have determined the nar- 
 row choice of words ; but it is certain, on the other hand, 
 that the scanty vocabulary which then existed mainly deter- 
 mined the limited range of his purposes. It is remarkable, 
 also, that the idiomatic forms and phrases are as scanty in 
 this ancient Chronicle as the ideas, the images, and the logi- 
 cal forms of connexion or transition. Such is the shallow 
 brook or rivulet of our language in its infant stage. Thence 
 it devolves a stream continually enlarging down to the 
 Norman era. Through five centuries (commencing with the 
 century of Bede) used as the vernacular idiom for the inter- 
 course of life by a nation expanding gradually under the 
 ripening influence of a pure religion and a wise jurispru- 
 dence, — benefiting, besides, by the culture it received from 
 a large succession of learned ecclesiastics, who too often 
 adopted the Latin for the vehicle of their literary commerce 
 with the Continent, but also in cases past all numbering ' 
 wrote (like the great patriot Alfred) for popular purposes 
 in Saxon, — even this rude dialect grew and widened its 
 foundations, until it became adequate to general intellectual 
 purposes. Still, even in this improved state, it would have 
 been found incommensurate to its great destiny. It could 
 not have been an organ corresponding to the grandeur of 
 those intellects which, in the fulness of time, were to com- 
 municate with mankind in oracles of truth or of power. It 
 could not have offered moulds ample enough for receiving 
 that vast literature which, in less than another five hun- 
 
 1 " In cases past all numbering": — To go no further than the one 
 branch of religious literature, vast masses of sacred poetry in the Saxon 
 language are yet slumbering, unused, unstudied, almost unknown to the 
 student, amongst our manuscript treasures. — De Q. 
 
A History of the English Language needed. 221 
 
 dred years, was beginning to well forth from the national 
 genius. 
 
 6. Here, at the very first entrance upon this interesting 
 theme, we stumble upon what we may now understand to 
 have been the blindest of human follies. The peculiar, and 
 without exaggeration we may say the providential, felicity 
 of the English language has been made its capital reproach 
 — that, whilst yet ductile and capable of new impressions, 
 it received a fresh and large infusion of alien wealth. It 
 is, say the imbecile, a "bastard" language, a "hybrid" 
 language, and so forth. And thus, for a metaphor, for a 
 name, for a sound, they overlook, as far as depends on their 
 will they sign away, the main prerogative and dowry of 
 their mother tongue. It is time to have done with these 
 follies. Let us open our eyes to our own advantages. Let 
 us recognise with thankfulness that fortunate inheritance of 
 collateral wealth which, by inoculating our Anglo-Saxon 
 stem with the mixed dialect of Neustria, laid open an avenue 
 mediately through which the whole opulence of Roman, and 
 ultimately of Grecian, thought plays freely through the 
 pulses of our native English. Most fortunately, the Saxon 
 language was yet plastic and unfrozen at the era of the 
 Norman invasion. The language was thrown again into 
 the crucible, and new elements were intermingled with its 
 own when brought into a state of fusion. 1 And this final 
 process it was, making the language at once rich in matter 
 and malleable in form, which created that composite and 
 multiform speech — fitted, like a mirror, to reflect the 
 thoughts of the myriad-minded Shakspere (6 avr/p pvpiovovs), 
 
 1 " When brought into a state of fusion: " — Let not the reader look 
 upon this image, when applied to an unsettled language, as pure fanciful 
 metaphor. Were there nothing more due to a superinduction of one 
 language upon another, merely the confusion of inflexional forms between 
 the two orders of declensions, conjugations, &c, would tend to recast a. 
 language, and virtually to throw it anew into a furnace of secondary 
 formation, by unsettling the old familiar forms. -De Q. 
 
222 The English Language. 
 
 and yet at the same time with enough remaining of its old 
 forest stamina for imparting a masculine depth to the sub- 
 limities of Milton or the Hebrew Prophets, and a patriarchal 
 simplicity to the Historic Scriptures. 
 
 7. Such being the value, such the slow development, of 
 our noble language, through a period of more than twice 
 six hundred years, how strange it must be thought that not 
 only we possess at this day no history, no circumstantial 
 annals, of its growth and condition at different eras, — a 
 defect which even the German literature of our language 
 has partially supplied, — but that, with one solitary excep- 
 tion, no eminent scholar has applied himself even to a single 
 function of this elaborate service. The solitary exception, 
 we need scarcely say, points to Dr. Johnson — whose merits 
 and whose demerits, whose qualifications and disqualifica- 
 tions, for a task of this nature, are now too notorious to 
 require any illustration from us. The slenderness of Dr. 
 Johnson's philological attainments, and his blank ignorance 
 of that particular philology which the case particularly 
 required — the philology of the northern languages — are 
 as much matters of record, and as undeniable, as, in the 
 opposite scale, are his logical skill, his curious felicity of 
 distinction, and his masculine vigour of definition. Work- 
 ing under, or over, a commission of men more learned than 
 himself, he would have been the ablest of agents for digest- 
 ing and organising their materials. To inform, or invest 
 with form, in the sense of logicians — in other words, to 
 impress the sense and trace the presence of principles — 
 that was Dr. Johnson's peculiar province; but to assign the 
 matter, whether that consisted in originating the elements 
 of thought, or in gathering the affinities of languages, was 
 suited neither to his nature nor to his habits of study. 
 And, of necessity, therefore, his famous dictionary is a 
 monument of powers unequally yoked together in one task : 
 skill in one function of his duty " full ten times as much 
 
A History of the English Language needed. 223 
 
 as there needs " ; skill in others sometimes feeble, some- 
 times none at all. 
 
 8. Of inferior attempts to illustrate the language, we 
 have Ben Jonson's Grammar, early in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury; Wallis the mathematician's Grammar (written in 
 Latin, and patriotically designed as a polemic grammar 
 against the errors of foreigners), towards the end of the 
 same century; Bishop Lowth's little School-Grammar in 
 the eighteenth century ; Archdeacon Nares's Orthoepy ; Dr. 
 Crombie's Etymology and Syntax; Noah Webster's various 
 essays on the same subject, followed by his elaborate Dic- 
 tionary, all written and first published in America. We 
 have also, and we mention it on account of its great but 
 most unmerited popularity, the grammar of Lindley Mur- 
 ray 1 — an American, by the way, as well as the eccentric 
 Noah. This book, full of atrocious blunders (some of which, 
 but with little systematic learning, were exposed in a work 
 of the late Mr. Hazlitt's 2 ), reigns despotically through the 
 young-ladies' schools from the Orkneys to the Cornish 
 Scillys. And of the other critical grammars, such as the 
 huge 4to of Green, the smaller one of Dr. Priestley, many 
 little abstracts prefixed to portable dictionaries, &c, there 
 may be gathered, since the year 1680, from 250 to 300 ; not 
 one of which is absolutely 3 without value — some raising 
 new and curious questions, others showing their talent in 
 solving old ones. Add to these the occasional notices of 
 grammatical niceties in the critical editions of our old poets ; 
 
 1 Cf. the essay on 'Rhetoric,' § 45, note. 
 
 2 See the essay on ' William Hazlitt.' 
 
 3 So little is the absolute value and learning of such books to be 
 measured by the critical pretensions of the class in which they rank 
 themselves, or by the promises of their title-pages, that we remember to 
 have seen some very acute remarks on pronunciation, on the value of 
 letters, &c, in a little Edinburgh book of rudiments, meant only for 
 children of four or five years old. It was called, we think, The Child's 
 Ladder. — De Q. 
 
224 The English Language. 
 
 and there we have the total amount of -what has hitherto 
 been contributed towards the investigation of our English 
 language in its grammatical theory. As to the investiga- 
 tion of its history, of its gradual rise and progress, and its 
 relations to neighbouring languages, that is a total blank, 
 — a title pointing to a duty absolutely in arrear, rather 
 than to any performance ever undertaken as yet even by 
 way of tentative essay. At least, any fractional attempt 
 in that direction is such as would barely form a single sec- 
 tion or sub-section in a general history. For instance, we 
 have critical essays of some value on the successive transla- 
 tions into English of the Bible. But these rather express, 
 in modulo parvo, the burden of laborious research which 
 awaits such a task pursued comprehensively than materially 
 diminish it. Even the history of Slang, whether of domestic 
 or foreign growth, and the record of the capricious influxes, 
 at particular epochs, from the Spanish, the French, 1 &c, 
 would furnish materials for a separate work. But we for- 
 
 1 By the way, it has long been customary (and partly in compliance 
 with foreign criticism, unlearned in our elder literature, and quite in- 
 competent to understand it) to style the period of Queen Anne and the 
 succeeding decade of years our Augustan age. The graver errors of 
 thought in such a doctrine are no present concern of ours. But, as 
 respects the purity of our language, and its dignity, never did either 
 suffer so long and gloomy an eclipse as in that period of our annals. The 
 German language, as written at that time in books, is positively so dis- 
 figured by French and Latin embroideries that it becomes difficult at times 
 to say which language is meant for the ground, and which for the decora- 
 tion. Our English is never so bad as that ; but the ludicrous introduction 
 of foreign forms, such, for example, as "his Intimados," "his Privados," 
 goes far to denationalize the tone of the diction. Even the familiar 
 allusions and abbreviations of that age, some of which became indispen- 
 sable to the evasion of what was deemed pedantry, such as 'tis and 
 'twas, are rank with meanness. In Shakspere's age the diction of books 
 was far more pure, more compatible with simplicity, and more dignified. 
 Amongst our many national blessings, never let us forget to be thankful 
 that in that age was made our final translation of the Bible, under the 
 State authority. How ignoble, how unscriptural, would have been a 
 translation made in the age of Pope! — De Q. 
 
What constitutes the Value of a Language. 225 
 
 bear to enter upon the long list of parts, chapters, and 
 sections, which must compose the architectural system of 
 so elaborate a work, seeing that the whole edifice itself is 
 hitherto a great idea in nubibus, as regards our own lan- 
 guage. The French, as we have observed, have little more 
 to boast of. And, in fact, the Germans and the Italians, 
 of all nations the two who most cordially hate and despise 
 each other, in this point agree — that they only have con- 
 structed many preparatory works, have reared something 
 more than mere scaffolding, towards such a systematic and 
 national monument. 
 
 ii. What constitutes the Value of a Language. 
 
 9. (1) It is painful and humiliating to an Englishman 
 that, whilst- all other nations show their patriotism sever- 
 ally in connexion with their own separate mother tongues, 
 claiming for them often merits which they have not, and 
 overlooking none of those which they have, his own country- 
 men show themselves ever ready, with a dishonourable 
 levity, to undervalue the English language, and always 
 upon no fixed principles. Nothing to ourselves seems so 
 remarkable as that men should dogmatise upon the preten- 
 sions of this and that language in particular without having 
 any general notions previously of what it is that constitutes 
 the value of a language universally. Without some pre- 
 liminary notion, abstractedly, of the precise qualities to be 
 sought for in a language, how are we to know whether the 
 main object of our question is found, or not found, in any 
 given language offered for examination? The Castilian is 
 pronounced fine, the Italian effeminate, the English harsh, 
 by many a man who has no shadow of a reason for his opin- 
 ions beyond some vague association of chivalresque quali- 
 ties with the personal bearing of Spaniards, or, again, of 
 special adaptation to operatic music in the Italian, or (as 
 
226 The English Language. 
 
 regards the English) because he has heard, perhaps, that 
 the letter s and crowded clusters of consonants and mono- 
 syllabic words prevail in it. 
 
 10. Such random and fantastic notions would be entitled 
 to little attention ; but, unfortunately, we find that men of 
 distinguished genius — men who have contributed to sustain 
 and extend the glory of this very English language — are 
 sometimes amongst its notorious depredators. Addison, in 
 a well-known passage of his critical essays, calls the English, 
 in competition with the Greek language, brick against 
 marble. Now, that there is a vocal 1 beauty in the Greek 
 which raises it in that particular point above all modern 
 languages, and not exclusively above the English, cannot be 
 denied ; but this is the lowest merit of a language — being 
 merely its sensuous merit (to borrow a word of Milton's) ; 
 and, beyond all doubt, as respects the higher or intellectual 
 qualities of a language, the English greatly excels the 
 Greek, and especially in that very case which provoked the 
 remark of Addison ; for it happens that some leading ideas 
 in the Paradise Lost — ideas essential to the very integrity 
 of the fable — cannot be expressed in Greek, or not so 
 expressed as to convey the same thought impregnated with 
 the same weight of passion. But let not our reverence for 
 the exquisite humour of Addison, and his admirable delicacy 
 
 1 "A vocal beauty in the Greek language": — This arises partly from 
 the musical effect of the mere inflexions of the verbs and participles, in 
 which so many dactylic successions of accent are interchanged with spon- 
 daic arrangements, and partly also from the remarkable variety of the 
 vowel sounds, which run through the whole gamut of possible varieties in 
 that point, and give more luxury of sound to the ear than in any other 
 known language. For the fact is that these varieties of vowel or diph- 
 thong sounds succeed to each other more immediately and more constantly 
 than in any other southern dialect of Europe which universally have a dis- 
 tinction in mere vocal or audible beauty not approached by any northern 
 language, unless (as some people allege) by the Russian ; and this, with 
 the other dialects of the Slavonian family, is to be classed as belonging to 
 Eastern, rather than to Northern, Europe.— De Q. Cf. essay on 'Lan- 
 guage,' § 0, note. 
 
What constitutes the Value of a Language. 227 
 
 af pencil in delineating the traits of character, hide from 
 as the fact that he was a very thoughtless and irreflective 
 sritic; that his criticisms, when just, rested not upon prin- 
 siples, but upon mere fineness of tact; that he was an abso- 
 lute ignoramus as regarded the literature of his own country ; 
 and that he was a mere bigot as regarded the antique liter- 
 ature of Pagan Greece or Eome. In fact, the eternal and 
 inevitable schism between the Romanticists and the Classi- 
 cists, though not in name, had already commenced in sub- 
 stance; and, where Milton was not free from grievous error 
 and consequent injustice, both to the writers of his country 
 and to the language, how could it be expected that the far 
 feebler mind of Addison should work itself clear of a 
 bigotry and a narrowness of sympathy as regards the antique 
 which the discipline and training of his whole life had 
 established? Even the merit of Addison is not sufficient 
 to waive his liability to one plain retort from an offended 
 Englishman — viz. that, before he signed away with such 
 lagrant levity the pretensions of his native language, at all 
 3vents it was incumbent upon him to show that he had 
 fathomed the powers of that language, had exhausted its 
 sapacity, and had wielded it with commanding effect. 
 Whereas we all know that Addison was a master of the 
 humble and unpretending English demanded, or indeed 
 suffered, by his themes, but for that very reason little 
 familiar with its higher or impassioned movements. 
 
 11. (2) But Addison, like most other critics on languages, 
 overlooked one great truth, which should have made such 
 sweeping undervaluations impossible as applied to any 
 language. This truth is that every language, every lan- 
 guage at least in a state of culture and development, has its 
 Dwn separate and incommunicable qualities of superiority. 
 The French itself, which in some weighty respects is 
 imongst the poorest of languages, had yet its own peculiar 
 nerits, not attainable or approachable by any other. For 
 
228 The English Language. 
 
 the whole purposes of what the French understand by the 
 word causer, for all the delicacies of social intercourse, 
 and the nuances of manners, no language but the French 
 possesses the requisite vocabulary. The word causer itself 
 is an illustration. Marivaux and other novelists, tedious 
 enough otherwise, are mere repertories of phrases untrans- 
 latable, irrepresentable, by equivalents in any European 
 language . And some of our own fashionable English novels, 
 which have been fiercely arraigned for their French em- 
 broidery as well as for other supposed faults, are thus far 
 justifiable — that, in a majority of instances, the English 
 could not have furnished a corresponding phrase with equal 
 point or piquancy — sometimes not at all. 
 
 12. (3) If even the French has its function of superiority, 
 so, and in a higher sense, have the English and other lan- 
 guages more decidedly northern. But the English, in par- 
 ticular, has a special dowry of power in its double-headed 
 origin. The Saxon part of the language fulfils one set of 
 functions, the Latin another. Meantime it is a great error 
 on the part of Lord Brougham (and we remember the same 
 error in others) to direct the student in his choice of words 
 towards the Saxon part of the language by preference. 
 Nothing can be more unphilosophic, or built on more 
 thorough misconception of the case. Neither part of the 
 language is good or bad absolutely, but in its relation to the 
 subject, and according to the treatment which the subject 
 is meant to receive. It is an error even to say that the 
 Saxon part is more advantageously used for cases of pas- 
 sion. Even that requires further limitation. Simple nar- 
 ration, and a pathos resting upon artless circumstances, — 
 elementary feelings, — homely and household affections, — 
 these are most suitably managed by the old indigenous 
 Saxon vocabulary. But a passion which rises into grandeur, 
 which is complex, elaborate, and interveined with high 
 meditative feelings, would languish or absolutely halt with- 
 
What constitutes the Value of a Language. 229 
 
 out aid from the Latin moiety of our language. Mr. Cole- 
 ridge remarks that the writings of all reflective or highly- 
 subjective poets overflow with Latin and Greek polysylla- 
 bles, or what the uneducated term "dictionary words." a 
 
 13. (4) Again, if there is no such thing in rerun, natura 
 as a language radically and universally without specific 
 powers, — if every language, in short, is and must be, accord- 
 ing to the circumstances under which it is moulded, an 
 
 . organ mi generis, and fitted to sustain with effect some 
 function or other of the human intellect, — so, on the other 
 hand, the very advantages of a language, those which are 
 most vaunted, become defects under opposite relations. 
 The power of running easily into composition, for instance, 
 on which the Germans show so much fierte" when stating the 
 pretensions of their own mother tongue, is in itself injuri- 
 ous to the simplicity and natural power of their poetry, 
 besides being a snare in many cases to the ordinary narrator 
 or describer, and tempting him aside into efforts of display 
 which mar the effect of his composition. In the early 
 stages of every literature, not simplicity (as it is thought) 
 but elaboration and complexity, and tumid artifice in the 
 structure of the diction, are the besetting vices of the poet : 
 witness the Eoman fragments of poetry anterior to Ennius. 
 Now, the fusile capacity of a language for running into 
 ready coalitions of polysyllables aids this tendency, and 
 almost of itself creates such a tendency. 
 
 14. (5) The process by which languages grow is worthy 
 of deep attention. So profound is the error of some men 
 on this subject that they talk familiarly of language as of 
 a thing deliberately and consciously " invented " by the 
 people who use it. A language never was invented 2 by any 
 
 1 Cf. Spencer's ' Philosophy of Style,' §§ 5-8. 
 
 2 Meantime, a few insulated words have been continually nourished by 
 authors, — that is, transferred to other uses, or formed by thoughtful com- 
 position and decomposition, or by skilful alterations of form and inflexion. 
 Thus Mr. Coleridge introduced the fine word ancestral, in lieu of the lum- 
 
230 The English Language. 
 
 people: that part which is not borrowed from adjacent 
 nations arises under instincts of necessity and convenience. 
 We will illustrate the matter by mentioning three such 
 modes of instinct in which has lain the parentage of at least 
 three words out of four in every language : first, the instinct 
 of abbreviation, prompted continually by hurry or by impa- 
 tience; secondly, the instinct of onomatopoeia, or, more 
 generally, the instinct of imitation applied directly to 
 sounds, indirectly to motion, and by the aid of analogies 
 more or less obvious applied to many other classes of 
 objects ; thirdly, the instinct of distinction, sometimes for 
 purposes of necessity, sometimes of convenience. This 
 process claims by far the largest application of words in 
 every language. Thus, from propriety (or the abstract idea 
 of annexation between two things by means of fitness or 
 adaptation) was struck off, by a more rapid pronunciation 
 and a throwing back of the accent, the modern word prop- 
 erty, in which the same general idea is limited to appro- 
 priations of pecuniary value; which, however, was long 
 expressed by the original word propriety, under a modified 
 enunciation. So, again, major as a military designation, 
 and mayor as a civil one, have split off from the very same 
 original word by varied pronunciations. And these diver- 
 gencies into multiplied derivatives from some single radix 
 are, in fact, the great source of opulence to one language by 
 
 bering word ancestorial, about the year 1798. Milton introduced the 
 indispensable word sensuous. Daniel, the truly philosophic poet and his- 
 torian, introduced the splendid class of words with the affix of inter, to 
 denote reciprocation, e.g. interpenetrate, to express mutual or interchange- 
 able penetration, — a form of composition which is deeply beneficial to 
 the language, and has been extensively adopted by Coleridge. We our- 
 selves may boast to have introduced the word orchestric ; which we regard 
 with parental pride, as a word expressive of that artificial and pompous 
 music which attends, for instance, the elaborate hexameter verse of Rome 
 and Greece in comparison with the simpler rhyme of the more exclusively 
 accentual metres in modern languages, or expressive of any organised 
 music in opposition to the natural warbling of the woods. — De Q. 
 
What constitutes the Value of a Language. 231 
 
 preference to another. And it is clear that the difference 
 in this respect between nation and nation will be in a com- 
 pound ratio of the complexity and variety of situations into 
 which men are thrown (whence the necessity of a complex 
 condition of society to the growth of a truly fine language) 
 
 — in the ratio, we say, of this complexity on the one hand, 
 and, on the other, of the intellectual activity put forth to 
 seize and apprehend these fleeting relations of things and 
 persons. Whence, according to the vast inequalities of 
 national minds, the vast disparity of languages. 
 
 15. (6) Hence we see the monstrosity of claiming a fine 
 or copious language for any rude or uncultivated, much 
 more for any savage, people, or even for a people of moun- 
 taineers, or for a nation subsisting chiefly by hunting, or 
 by agriculture and rural life exclusively, or in any way 
 sequestered and monotonous in their habits. It is philo- 
 sophically impossible that the Gaelic, or the Hebrew, or the 
 Welsh, or the Manx, or the Armorie, could at any stage 
 have been languages of compass or general poetic power. 
 In relation to a few objects peculiar to their own climates, 
 or habits, or superstitions, any of these languages may have 
 been occasionally gifted with a peculiar power of expression : 
 what language is not with regard to some class of objects? 
 But a language of power and compass cannot arise except 
 amongst cities and the habits of luxurious people. " They 
 talked," says John Paul, speaking of two rustic characters 
 in one of his sketches, — "they talked, as country people are 
 apt to talk, concerning nothing. " And the fact is, univer- 
 sally, that rural occupations and habits, unless counteracted 
 determinately by intellectual pursuits, tend violently to 
 torpor. Social gatherings, social activity, social pleasure 
 
 — these are the parents of language. And there is but the 
 one following exception to the rule that, such as is the 
 activity of the national intellect in arresting fugitive rela- 
 tions, such will be the language resulting ; and this excep- 
 
232 ± ne jLngasn, ijanguage. 
 
 tion lies in the mechanical advantages offered by some 
 inflections compared with others for generating and educ- 
 ing the possible modifications of each primitive idea. Some 
 modes of inflections easily lend themselves, by their very 
 mechanism, to the adjuncts expressing degrees, expressing 
 the relations of time, past, present, and future, expressing 
 the modes of will, desire, intention, &c. For instance, the 
 Italians have terminal forms, ino, ello, acchio, &c, express- 
 ing all gradations of size above or below the ordinary 
 standard. The Romans, again, had frequentative forms, 
 inceptive forms, forms expressing futurition and desire, &c. 
 These shorthand expressions performed the office of natural 
 symbols, or hieroglyphics, which custom had made univer- 
 sally intelligible. Now, in some cases this machinery is 
 large, and therefore extensively auxiliary to the popular 
 intellect in building up the towering pile of a language ; in 
 others it is meagre, and so far it is possible that, from want 
 of concurrency in the mechanic aids, the language may, in 
 some respects, not be strictly commensurate to the fineness 
 of the national genius. 
 
 16. (7) Another question which arises upon all languages 
 respects their degrees of fitness for poetic and imaginative 
 purposes. The mere question of fact is interesting; and 
 the question as to the casual agency which has led to such 
 a result is still more so. In this place we shall content 
 ourselves with drawing the reader's attention to a general 
 phenomenon which comes forward in all non-poetic lan- 
 guages — viz. that the separation of the two great fields, 
 prose and poetry, or of the mind impassioned or unimpas- 
 sioned, is never perfectly accomplished. This phenomenon 
 is most striking in the Oriental languages ; where the com- 
 mon edicts of government or provincial regulations of police 
 assume a ridiculous masquerade dress of rhetorical or even 
 of poetic animation. But amongst European languages 
 this capital defect is most noticeable in the French, which 
 
What constitutes the Value of a Language. 233 
 
 lias no resources for elevating its diction when applied to 
 cases and situations the most lofty or the most affecting. 
 The single misfortune of having no neuter gender, by com- 
 pelling the mind to distribute the colouring of life univer- 
 sally, and by sexualising in all cases, neutralises the effect, 
 as a special effect, for any case. To this one capital 
 deformity, which presents itself in every line, many others 
 have concurred. And it might be shown convincingly that 
 the very power of the French language as a language for 
 social intercourse, is built on its impotence for purposes of 
 passion, grandeur and native simplicity. The English, on 
 the other hand, besides its double fountain of words, which 
 furnishes at once two separate keys. of feeling, and the ready 
 means of obtaining distinct movements for the same general 
 passion, enjoys the great advantage above southern languages 
 of having a neuter gender, which, from the very first estab- 
 lishing a mode of shade, establishes, by a natural conse- 
 quence, the means of creating light, and a more potent 
 vitality. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 a. Style. 
 
 "Style is the disentangling of thoughts or ideas reciprocally in- 
 volved in each other." — De Quincey's 'Posthumous Works,' ed. by 
 Japp, p. 225. ' Brevia.' 
 
 "I happened this evening (Saturday, August 3d, '44) to be saying 
 of W. W. [Wordsworth] to myself : ' No poet is so free from all cases 
 like this, viz., where all the feelings and spontaneous thoughts which 
 they have accumulated coming to an end, and yet the case seeming to 
 require more to finish it or bring it round, like a peal of church bells, 
 they are forced to invent, and form descants on raptures never really 
 felt. Suddenly this suggested that invention, therefore, so far from 
 being a differential quality of poetry, was, in fact, the polar opposite, 
 spontaneousness being the true quality.' " — Ibid., pp. 293, 294. 
 
 "Cause of the Novel's Decline. — No man, it maybe safely laid 
 down as a general rule, can obtain a strong hold over the popular 
 mind without more or less of real power. A reality there must be. 
 The artifice, the trickery, cannot arise in this first stage, as by any 
 substitution of a shadow for a reality. If the mass of readers feel 
 a power, and acknowledge a power, in that case power there must be. 
 It was the just remark of Dr. Johnson that men do not deceive them- 
 selves in their amusements. And amusement it is that the great 
 public seek in literature. The meaner and the more sensual the 
 demands of a man are, so much the less possible it becomes to cheat 
 him. Seeking for warmth, he cannot be wrong when he says that he 
 has found it. Asking for alcohol, he will never be cheated with water. 
 -His -feelings in such a case, his impressions, instantaneously justify 
 themselves ; that is, they bear witness past all doubting to the cer- 
 tainty of what they report. So far there is no opening to mistake. 
 The error, the opening to the spurious on the largest scale, arises first 
 upon the quality of the power. Strength varies upon an endless scale, 
 
 235 
 
236 
 
 A-ppenaix. 
 
 not merely by its own gradations, but by the modes and the degrees 
 in which it combines with other qualities. And there are many com- 
 binations, cases of constant recurrence, in which some natural vigour, 
 but of no remarkable order, enters into alliance with animal propen- 
 sities ; where a portentous success will indicate no corresponding power 
 in the artist, but only an unusual insensibility to decency and the 
 opinion of thoughtful persons. 
 
 " Novels are the one sole class of books that ever interest the public, 
 that reach its heart, or e^en catch its eye. And the reason why novels 
 are becoming much more licentious, and much grosser in the arts by 
 which they court public favour, lies undoubtedly in the quality of that 
 new reading public which the extension of education has added to the 
 old one. An education miserably shallow, whilst unavailing for any 
 purpose of real elevation, lets in upon the theatre of what is called 
 by courtesy literature a vast additional audience that once would have 
 been excluded altogether. This audience, changed in no respect from 
 its former condition of intellect and manners and taste, bringing only 
 the single qualification of ability to read, is now strong enough in 
 numbers to impress a new character upon literature in so far as liter- 
 ature has a, motive for applying itself to their wants. The conse- 
 quences are showing themselves, and will show themselves more 
 broadly. It is difficult with proper delicacy to seek illustrations 
 among our own living writers. Illustrations were all too easily found 
 did we care to enter on the task. 
 
 " It is true that, during the currency of any year, whilst the quan- 
 tity is liable to indeterminate augmentation, ballads will be rather 
 looking down in the market. But that is a shadow that settles upon 
 every earthly good thing. No Greek book, for instance, amongst the 
 many that have perished, would so much rejoice many of us by its 
 resurrection as the comedies of Menander. Yet, if a, correspondent 
 should write word from Pompeii that twenty-five thousand separate 
 dramas of Menander had been found in good preservation, adding in 
 a postscript that forty thousand more had been impounded within the 
 last two hours, and that there was every prospect of bagging two 
 hundred thousand more before morning, we should probably petition 
 Government to receive the importing vessels with chain-shot. Not 
 even Milton or Shakespeare could make head against such a Lopez 
 de Vega principle of ruinous superfluity. Allowing for this one case 
 of preternatural excess, assuming only that degree of limitation which 
 any absolute past must almost always create up to that point, we say 
 that there is no conceivable composition, or class of compositions, 
 
Appendix. 237 
 
 which will not be welcomed into literature provided, as to matter, 
 that it shall embody some natural strain of feeling, and provided, as 
 to manner, that it illustrate the characteristic style of a known gen- 
 eration. 
 
 " It might suffice for our present purpose to have once firmly distin- 
 guished between the two modes of literature. But it may be as well 
 to point out a few corollaries from this distinction, which will serve at 
 the same time to explain and to confirm it. For instance, first of all, 
 it has been abundantly insisted on in our modern times, that the value 
 of every literature lies in its characteristic part ; a truth certainly, but 
 a truth upon which the German chanticleer would not have crowed 
 and flapped his wings so exultingly, had he perceived the original and 
 indispensable schism between the literature of knowledge and the 
 literature of power, because in this latter only can anything character- 
 istic of a' man or of a nation be embodied. The science of no man 
 can be characteristic, no man can geometrize or chemically analyze 
 after a manner peculiar to himself. He may be the first to open a 
 new road, and in that meaning it may be called his road ; but his it 
 will not be by any such peculiarities as will found an incommunicable 
 excellence. In literature proper, viz., the literature of power, this is 
 otherwise. There may doubtless have been many imitative poets, 
 wearing little or nothing of a natural individuality ; but of no poet 
 that ever led his own class, can it have been possible that he should 
 have been otherwise than strongly differenced by inimitable features 
 and by traits not transferable. . Consequently the rb characteristic, 
 of which in German cloudland so noisy a proclamation is made 
 as of some transcendental discovery, is a mere inference from the 
 very idea of a literature. For we repeat that in blank knowledge 
 a separate peculiarity marking the individual is not conceivable, 
 whereas in a true literature reflecting human nature, not as it repre- 
 sents, but as it wills, not as a passive minor, but as a self-moving 
 power, it is not possible to avoid the characteristic except only in the 
 degree by which the inspiring nature happens to be feeble. The exor- 
 bitations that differentiate them may be of narrow compass, but only 
 where the motive power was originally weak. And agreeably to this 
 remark it may be asserted that in all literature properly so-called 
 genius is always manifested, and talent generally ; but in the litera- 
 ture of knowledge it may be doubted very seriously whether there is 
 any opening for more than talent. Genius may be defined in the 
 severest manner as that which is generally characteristic ; but a thou- 
 sand times we repeat that one man's mode of knowing an object can- 
 
238 Appendix. 
 
 not differ from another man's. It cannot be characteristic, and its 
 geniality cannot be externally manifested. To have said, therefore, 
 of the poetry surviving from ancient Latium, from Castile, from Eng- 
 land, that this is nationally characteristic, and knowable apart by 
 inalienable differences, is saying no more than follows out of the very 
 definition by which any and every literature proper is limited and 
 guarded as a mode of power. 
 
 " Secondly, even in the exceptions and hesitations upon applying 
 the rigour of this distinction, we may read the natural recognition 
 (however latent and unconscious), of the rule itself. No man would 
 think, for example, of placing a treatise on surveying, on mensuration, 
 on geological stratifications, in any collection of his national literature. 
 He would be lunatic to do so. A Birmingham or Glasgow Directory 
 has an equal title to take its station in the national literature. But he 
 will hesitate on the same question arising with regard to a history. 
 Where upon examination the history turns out to be a mere chronicle, 
 or register of events chronologically arranged, with no principle of 
 combination pervading it, nor colouring from peculiar views of policy, 
 nor sympathy with the noble and impassioned in human action, the 
 decision will be universal and peremptory to cashier it from the litera- 
 ture. Yet this case, being one of degree, ranges through a large and 
 doubtful gamut. A history like that of Froissart, or of Herodotus, 
 where the subjective from the writer blends so powerfully with the 
 gross objective, where the moral picturesque is so predominant, to- 
 gether with freshness of sensation which belongs to ' blissful infancy ' 
 in human life, or to a stage of society in correspondence to it, cannot 
 suffer a demur of jealousy as to its privilege of entering the select fold 
 of literature. But such advantages are of limited distribution. And, 
 to say the truth, in its own nature neither history nor biography, unless 
 treated with peculiar grace, and architecturally moulded, has any high 
 pretension to rank as an organic limb of literature. The very noblest 
 history, in much of its substance, is but by a special indulgence within 
 the privilege of that classification. Biography stands on the same 
 footing. Of the many memorials dedicated to the life of Milton, how 
 few are entitled to take their station in the literature ! And why ? 
 Not merely that they are disqualified by their defective execution, but 
 often that they necessarily record what has become common prop- 
 erty." — Ibid., pp. 300-305. 
 
 " What is it that we mean by literature? Popularly, and amongst 
 the thoughtless, it is held to include everything that is printed in 
 
Appendix. 239 
 
 a book. Little logic is required to disturb that definition ; the most 
 thoughtless person is easily made aware that in the idea of literature 
 one essential element is, — some relation to a general and common in- 
 terest of man, so that what applies only to a local, or professional, or 
 merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of 
 a book, will not belong to literature. So far the definition is easily 
 narrowed ; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is much that 
 takes a station in books not literature ; but, inversely, much that really 
 is literature never reaches a station in books. The weekly sermons of 
 Christendom, that vast pulpit literature which acts so extensively upon 
 the popular mind, — to warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to 
 alarm, — does not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten thou- 
 sandth part of its extent. The drama again, as, for instance, the 
 finest of Shakspere's plays in England, and all leading Athenian 
 plays in the noontide of the Attic stage, operated as a literature on 
 the public mind, and were (according to the strictest letter of that 
 term) published through the audiences that witnessed their represen- 
 tation some time before they were published as things to be read ; and 
 they were published in this scenical mode of publication with much 
 more effect than they could have had as books, during ages of costly 
 copying or of costly printing. 
 
 " Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea co-extensive and inter- 
 changeable with the idea of literature ; since much literature, scenic, 
 forensic, or didactic (as from lecturers and public orators) , may never 
 come into books ; and much that does come into books may connect 
 itself with no literary interest. But a far more important correction, 
 applicable to the common vague idea of literature, is to be sought — 
 not so much in a better definition of literature, as in a sharper dis- 
 tinction of the two functions which it fulfils. In that great social 
 organ, which collectively we call literature, there may be distinguished 
 two separate offices that may blend and often do so, but capable 
 severally of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal 
 repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge, and secondly, 
 the literature of power. The function of the first is, to teach ; the 
 function of the second is, to move : the first is a rudder, the second an 
 oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding ; 
 the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher under- 
 standing or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and 
 sympathy. Remotely, it may travel towards an object seated in what 
 Lord Bacon calls dry light; but proximately it does and must operate, 
 else it ceases to be a literature of power, on and through that humid 
 
240 Appendix. 
 
 light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering iris of human 
 passions, desires and genial emotions. Men have so little reflected on 
 the higher functions of literature, as to find it a paradox if one should 
 describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of hooks to give infor- 
 mation. But this is a paradox only in a sense which makes it honour- 
 able to be paradoxical. "Whenever we talk in ordinary language of 
 seeking information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words 
 as connected with something of absolute novelty. But it is the gran- 
 deur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests, 
 •that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds : it exists 
 eternally by way of germ or latent principle in the lowest as in the 
 highest, needing to be developed but never to be planted. To be 
 capable of transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that 
 ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than 
 truth, namely, power, or deep sympathy with truth. What is the 
 effect, for instance, upon society, of children? By the pity, by the 
 tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which connect 
 themselves with the helplessness, with the innocence and with the 
 simplicity of children, not only are the primal affections strengthened 
 and continually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest in the 
 sight of heaven — the frailty, for instance, which appeals to forbear- 
 ance, the innocence which symbolizes the heavenly, and the simplicity 
 which is most alien from the worldly, are kept up in perpetual remem- 
 brance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. A purpose of the 
 same nature is answered by the higher literature, namely, the litera- 
 ture of power. What do you learn from Paradise Lost ? Nothing at 
 all. What do you learn from a cookery-book ? Something new, 
 something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But 
 would you therefore put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level 
 of estimation than the divine poem ? What you owe to Milton is not 
 any knowledge, of which a million of separate items are still but a 
 million of advancing steps on the same earthly level ; what you owe, is 
 power, that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of 
 sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx 
 is a step upwards — a step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder from 
 earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowl- 
 edge, from first to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could 
 never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth ; whereas, 
 the very first step in power is a flight — is an ascending into another 
 element where earth is forgotten." — Paper on 'Alexander Pope.' 
 
Appendix. 241 
 
 6. Rhetoric. 
 
 "On the Distinction between 'Rhetorica Utens ' and ' Rhe- 
 torica Docens.' — It was a perplexity, familiar to the experience of 
 the Schoolmen, that oftentimes one does not know whether to under- 
 stand by the term logic the act and process of reasoning involved and 
 latent in any series of connected propositions, or this same act and 
 process formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. 
 For instance, if you should happen to say, ' Dr. Isaac Watts, the 
 English Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man ; but alas ! 
 for his logic, what can his best friend say for it ? The most charita- 
 ble opinion must pronounce it at the best so-so ' — in such a case, what 
 is it that you would be understood to speak of? Would it be the 
 general quality of the Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of 
 his philosophical method, or would it be the particular little book 
 known as ' The Doctor: his Logic,' 1 price 5s., bound in calf, and which 
 you might be very shy of touching with a, pair of tongs, for fear of 
 dimming their steel polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your 
 motions ? The same ambiguity affects many other cases. For in- 
 stance, if you heard a man say, ' The rhetoric of Cicero is not fitted 
 to challenge much interest,' you might naturally understand it of the 
 particular style and rhetorical colouring — which was taxed with being 
 florid ; nay Rhodian ; nay, even Asiatic — that characterizes that 
 great orator's compositions ; or, again, the context might so restrain 
 the word as to force it into meaning the particular system or theory of 
 rhetoric addressed to Herennius, a system which (being traditionally 
 ascribed to Cicero) is usually printed amongst his works. Here, and in 
 scores of similar cases, lies often a trap for the understanding ; but 
 the Schoolmen evaded this trap by distinguishing between ' Rhetorica 
 utens,'' and 'Rhetorica docens,' 1 between the rhetoric that laid down 
 or delivered didactically the elements of oratorical persuasion as an 
 art to be learned, and rhetoric, on the other hand, as a creative energy 
 that wielded these elements by the mouth of Pericles in the year 
 440 B.C., or by the mouth of Demosthenes, 340 B.C. ; between 
 rhetoric the scholastic art and rhetoric the heaven-born power ; be- 
 tween the rhetoric of Aristotle that illuminated the solitary student, 
 and the rhetoric of Demosthenes that ran along in rolling thunders to 
 the footstool of Artaxerxes' throne. Oh, these dear spindle-shanked 
 Schoolmen ! they were people, respected reader, not to be sneezed at. 
 What signifies having spindle-shanks ?" — ' Posthumous Works,' 
 pp. 217, 218. 
 
242 Appendix. 
 
 c. Language. 
 
 " Laid in wait for him. — This false phrase occurs in some article 
 (a Crimea article, I suppose) in the same Advertiser of January 25. 
 And I much doubt whether any ordinary ear would reconcile itself to 
 lay in wait (as a, past tense) even when instructed in its propriety." 
 
 " Timeous and dubiety are had, simply as not authorized by any 
 but local usage. A word used only in Provence or amongst the 
 Pyrenees could not be employed by a classical Prench writer except 
 under a caveat and for a special purpose." 
 
 " Plenty, used under the absurd misleading of its terminal 'y ' as 
 an adjective. Alongst, remember of; able for, the worse of liquor, to 
 call for, to go the length of, as applied to a distance ; ' I don't think 
 it,' instead of ' I don't think so.' " 
 
 "In the Lady's Newspaper for Saturday, May 8, 1852 (No. 280) 
 occurs the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silli- 
 ness and vulgarity connected with the use of assist for help at the 
 dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book 
 entitled ' The Illustrated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. 
 . . . Two cases occur of this matchless absurdity : 1. An ideal carver 
 is described : he, after carving, ' is as cool and collected as ever, and 
 assists the portions he has carved with as much grace as he displayed 
 in carving the fowl.' 2. Further on, when contrasting, not the 
 carvers, but the things to be carved, coming to ' Neck of Veal,' he says 
 of the carver : ' Should the vertebrae have not been jointed by the 
 butcher, you would find yourself in the position of the ungraceful 
 carver, being compelled to exercise a degree of strength which should 
 never be suffered to appear, very possibly, too, assisting gravy in 
 a manner not contemplated by the person unfortunate enough to 
 receive it.' " 
 
 " Gfenteel is the vulgarest and most plebeian of all known words. 
 Accordingly (and strange it is that the educated users of this word 
 should not perceive that fact) , aristocratic people — people in the most 
 undoubted Uite of society as to rank or connections — utterly ignore 
 the word. They are aware of its existence in English dictionaries ; 
 they know that it slumbers in those vast repositories ; they even 
 apprehend your meaning in a vague way when you employ it as an 
 
Appendix. 243 
 
 epithet for assigning the pretensions of an individual or a family. 
 Generally it is understood to imply that the party so described is in a 
 position to make morning calls, to leave cards, to be presentable for 
 anything to the contrary apparent in manners, style of conversation, 
 etc. But these and other suggestions still leave a vast area unmapped 
 of blank charts in which the soundings are still doubtful. 
 
 "The word 'genteel' is so eminently vulgar apparently for this 
 reason, that it presents a non-vulgar distinction under a gross and 
 vulgar conception of that distinction. The true and central notion, 
 on which the word revolves, is elevating ; but, by a false abstraction 
 of its elements, it is degraded. And yet in parts of this island where 
 the progress of refinement is torpid, and the field of vision is both 
 narrow and unchanging in all that regards the nuances of manners, I 
 have remarked that the word ' genteel ' maintains its old advantageous 
 acceptation ; and as a proof of this, eminent and even revolutionary 
 thinkers born and bred in such provincial twilight, use the word as if 
 untainted and hardly aware that it is fly-blown." 
 
 " There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd 
 imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for 
 instance, ' condign honours, ' ' condign treatment ' (treatment appro- 
 priate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., 
 giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also 
 providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left 
 without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous circum- 
 locution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd 
 sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the 
 popular usage, this word has some fantastic, inalienable connection 
 with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. 
 No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there 
 is of all knowledge ; so there is of every science. The radical and 
 characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own 
 parliamentary distinction of the good speaker, as contrasted with the 
 good debater. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a 
 question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their 
 just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical 
 deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces 
 the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, 
 has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, 
 dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical 
 smoothness of a priori abstractions with the coarse angularities of 
 
244 Appendix. 
 
 practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and 
 almost in every page, polemic ; whilst very often the particular objec- 
 tions or difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being 
 spread through entire systems, and assumed as precognita that are 
 familiar to the learned student." 
 
 ' ' Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, 
 but hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even 
 of the unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word 
 implicit. As the word condign, so capable of an extended sense, is 
 yet constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with 
 the word punishment (for we never say, as we might say, ' condign 
 rewards'), so also the word implicit is in English always associated 
 with the word faith. People say that Papists have an implicit faith 
 in their priests. What they mean is this : If a piece of arras, or a 
 carpet, is folded up, then it is implicit according to the original Latin 
 word ; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is explicit. Therefore, 
 when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) 
 says to his priest (as in effect always he does say), 'Sir, I cannot 
 comprehend all this doctrine ; bless you, I have not the thousandth 
 part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should directly 
 believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is wrapt up (im- 
 plicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here the priest 
 believes explicitly: he believes implicitly." 
 
 " Miss Edgeworth, let me remark, commits trespasses upon language 
 that are really past excusing. In one place she says that a man ' had 
 a contemptible opinion ' of some other man's understanding. Such a 
 blunder is not of that class which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not 
 much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once 
 illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common 
 amongst vulgar people, and them only. It ranks, for instance, with 
 the common formula of ' /am agreeable, if you prefer it.' " — ' Post- 
 humous works, ' ' Erevia. ' 
 
 d. Kant's Neglect of Style. 
 
 A good example of Kant's style in the longer and more involved 
 sentences is the following: " Eine Ausflucht darin suchen, dass man 
 bios die Art der Bestimmungsgrunde seiner causalitat nach dem 
 Naturgesetze einem comparative Begriffe von Freiheit anpasst, (nach 
 
Appendix. 245 
 
 welchem das bisweilen freie Wirkung heisst, davon der bestimniende 
 Naturgrvuid innerlich in wirkenden Wesen liegt, z,. B. das, was ein 
 geworfener Korper verrichtet, wenn er in freier Bewegung ist, da man 
 das Wort Freiheit braucht, weil er, wahrend dass er im Fluge ist, 
 nicht von aussen wodurch getrieben wird, oder wie wir die Bewegung 
 einer Uhr auch eine freie Bewegung nennen, weil sie ihren Zeiger 
 selbst treibt, der also nicht ausserlich geschoben werden darf, ebenso 
 die handlungen des Menschen, ob sie gleich duroh ihre Bestimmungs- 
 griinde, die in der Zeit vorhergehen, nothwendig sind, dennoch frei 
 nennen, weil es doch innere durch unsere eigenen Krafte hervor- 
 gebrachte Vorstellungen, daduroh nach veranlassenden Umstanden 
 erzeugte Begierden und mithin naeh unserem eigenen Belieben be- 
 wirkte Handlungen sind,) ist ein elender Behelf, womit sich noeh 
 immer Einige hinbalten lassen, und so jenes schwere Problem mit 
 einer kleinen Wortklauberei aufgelost zu haben meinen, an dessen 
 Auflosung Jahrtausende vergeblich gearbeitet haben, die daher wohl 
 sehwerlioh so ganz auf der Oberflache gefunden werden diirfte." — 
 'Krit. d. Pr. V.' Sammt. Werke, Hartenstein's ed., Vol. V., pp. 100, 
 101. 
 
 "As there were Latin versions, &c, of Kant, it must reasonably 
 occur to any reader to ask why Mr. Stewart should not have consulted 
 these. To this question Mr. Stewart answers that he could not toler- 
 ate their ' barbarous ' style and nomenclature. I must confess that 
 in such an answer I see nothing worthy of a philosopher, and should 
 rather have looked for it from a literary petit-maitre than from an 
 emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy. Will a philosopher decline 
 a useful experiment in physics because it will soil his kid gloves '! 
 Who thinks or cares about style in such studies that is sincerely and 
 anxiously in quest of truth ? In fact, style, in any proper sense, is no 
 more a possible thing in such investigations as the understanding is 
 summoned to by Kant than it is in Euclid's Elements. As to the no- 
 menclature again, supposing that it had been barbarous, who objects 
 to the nomenclature of modern chemistry, which is, quoad materiam, 
 not only a barbarous but a hybrid nomenclature. Wherever law and 
 intellectual order prevail, they debarbarize (if I may be allowed such 
 a coinage) what in its elements might be barbarous : the form ennobles 
 the matter." — De Quincey's ' Letters to a Young Man,' Letter V. 
 
 " Our late friend Councillor Wlomer was once sent to Konigsberg 
 to inspect the bank in that place, and falling in with his chum of forty 
 
246 Appendix. 
 
 years before, the venerable Professor Kant, was glad to renew old 
 acquaintance. 
 
 " ' But,' says Kant, ' you, who are a man of business, have you ever 
 once felt a desire to look into my books ? ' 
 
 " 'Oh, indeed yes, and I would read them oftener only that I run 
 out of fingers.' 
 
 " ' What am I to understand by that ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, my dear friend, your style abounds in parentheses and 
 restrictive clauses, all of which as one reads must be kept in mind. 
 So I put one finger on a word here and another finger on a word there, 
 and then a third and a fourth finger, and before I finish the page all 
 my fingers are gone.' " — ' Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter.' 
 Bd. IV., pp. 110, 111, Zelter an Goethe. 
 
 " But the complication of literary style is not the worst ^ault in 
 these works. The logical arrangement of the ethical treatises (' Foun- 
 dation of the Metaphysic of Ethic ' and ' Criticism of Practical Rea- 
 son ') is defective in the extreme. It seems often as if several attempts 
 to express the same thought had been put down one after the other 
 without any effort to fuse the several redactions into continuity." — 
 Wallace, ' Kant,' pp. 158, 159. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 [The figures refer to tbe pages of the text.] 
 
 Addison, 226, 227. 
 
 jEschylus, 44 note, 79, 92, 106, 111, 
 
 157, 217. 
 Albertius, 140 note. 
 Alcibiades, 88. 
 Aldorisius, 73. 
 Alexander, 87-97. 
 Alfred, 220. 
 
 Allen, Grant, 158 note. 
 Anacreon, 98. 
 Anaxagoras, 65, 92. 
 Ancestorial, 229 note. 
 Ancestral, 229 note. 
 Anglo-Saxon, 219-221. 
 Antoninus, 99. 
 Apelles, 93. 
 Aphorisms, 59. 
 Apollodorus, 139 note. 
 Appian, 99. 
 
 Aristocracy, Style of the, 16, 17. 
 Ariston, 140 note. 
 Aristophanes, 58, 92, 106, 132, 133, 
 
 134. 
 Aristotle, 8 note, 38 note, 44, 65, 93, 
 
 106, 108, 111, 130, 131, 140 note, 
 
 141-146, 148, 158 note, 215, 217, 
 
 218. 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric, 140-145. 
 Aristotle on style, 104 note. 
 Arnobius, 151. 
 Article, the, 66, 67. 
 Assist, 242. 
 Augustan Age, 224. 
 Augustus, 17, 18, 91. 
 Austin, St., 151. - 
 
 Bacon, 93, 140 note, 167 note, 206 
 
 note, 216. 
 Bain, 140 note. 
 Barbarians, 202, 203. 
 Barrow, 167. 
 Basil, 151. 
 Batteux, 73. 
 Bede, 220. 
 Benoit, 103 note. 
 Bergmann, 199. 
 
 Bible, Translation of, 224 note. 
 Blair, 73. 
 
 Bolingbroke, 169, 179. 
 Bookish diction, 19, 20, 21, 25. 
 Bossuet, 29. 
 Bouhours, 73. 
 Bourdaloue, 29. 
 Brooke, Lord, 183. 
 Brougham, 228. 
 
 Browne, Sir T., 103, 161, 162, 167. 
 Brunetiere, 85. 
 Buffon, 29. 
 Burgersdyk, 143. 
 Burke, 39, 170, 171, 173-176, 185, 
 
 189, 190. 
 Burton, 158. 
 Butler, 116 note. 
 
 Caesar's rule, 16. 
 Callimachus, 98. 
 Campbell, 139, 140 note,. 147, 194, 
 
 195 note. 
 Canning, 179, 180. 
 Carriere, 85 note. 
 Casaubon, 187, 206. 
 
 247 
 
248 
 
 Index. 
 
 Cellini, 212. 
 
 Celsus, 140 note. 
 
 Chaignet, 103 note. 
 
 Charles I., 136. 
 
 Chateaubriand, 29, 181. 
 
 Chatham, 169, 170. 
 
 Chatterton, 66. 
 
 Chaucer, 92, 206 note. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 16, 115 note, 169. 
 
 Chillingworth, 206 note. 
 
 Chrysippus, 140 note. 
 
 Chrysostom, 151. 
 
 Cicero, 11, 71, 80, 81, 96, 111, 116, 
 
 117, 133, 140 note, 204, 205. 
 Classicists, 227. 
 Coleridge, 27, 59, 60, 88, 147, 163, 
 
 193 note, 229. 
 Composition, 59. 
 Condign, 243. 
 Condillac, 29. 
 Contemptible, *2AA. 
 Conversation, 26, 27, 28. 
 Cope, 44 note, 103 note. 
 Corneille, 206 note. 
 Cowley, 157. 
 Cowper, 82, 183. 
 Crackenthorpius, 143. 
 Crassus, 80. 
 Critics, Italian, 150. 
 Crombie, 223. 
 Cromwell, 206, 207. 
 Curtius, Q., 190. 
 
 Daniel, Pere, 218. 
 
 Davies, 183. 
 
 Demagogues, 134, 135. 
 
 Demosthenes, 93, 135, 149, 163. 
 
 Dion Cassius, 99. 
 
 Discursive and intuitive, 159, 160. 
 
 Donne, 157. 
 
 Drama, 44. 
 
 Drama, Laws of, 217. 
 
 Dubiety, 242. 
 
 Dubos, 73. 
 
 Duck, Stephen, 47. 
 
 Duclos, 29. 
 
 Egger, 103 note, 106 note. 
 
 Eloquence, 139, 147, 153-150. 
 
 Eloquence, pulpit, 184, 185. 
 
 Enthymeme, 142-146, 194 note. 
 
 Ernesti, 205 note. 
 
 Erskine, 115. 
 
 Euripides, 44 note, 79, 92, 106, 132, 
 
 133, 134, 217. 
 Evolution of Literature, 84, 85. 
 Ezekiel, 157. 
 
 Facciolati, 143-146, 194 note. 
 Fancy, 173. 
 Florian, 181. 
 Footnotes, 39. 
 
 Forum, The, as means of Publica- 
 tion, 125 ff. 
 Foscolo, Ugo, 183 note. 
 Foster, 168. 
 Fox, Chas., 39, 170. 
 Francis, Sir Philip, 176-179. 
 French Rhetoric, 184, 185. 
 French style, 25-29. 
 Froissart, 51. 
 
 Galileo, 65. 
 Gassendi, 145 note. 
 Generation, Length of a, 87 note. 
 Genteel, 242. 
 Genung, 141 note. 
 Geometry, 120. 
 German style, 31-34. 
 -Gibbon, 51, 96, 99, 202 note. 
 Gifford, 159. 
 Goethe, 82, 209 note. 
 Gracchi, the, 80. 
 Grammar, 41. 
 Greek Anthology, 98 note. 
 Green, 223. 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen, 151. 
 Greville, 157. 
 Gros, 103 note. 
 
 Hall, Fitzedward, 8 
 Hall, Robert, 168. 
 Hamilton, 143 note. 
 
 note. 
 
Index. 
 
 249 
 
 Hazlitt, 223. 
 Helvetius, 29. 
 
 Hermogenes, 103, 163 note. 
 Herodotus, 50-58, 92, 111. 
 Hesiod, 97. 
 Hiekes, 219. 
 Hill, A. S., 140 note. 
 Hill, D. J., 140 note. 
 Homer, 97, 203 note. 
 Hooker, 190, 206 note. 
 Horace, 18, 129, 210. 
 Huet, 27, 60. 
 Humbug, 197. 
 Hume, 153, 163 note. 
 
 Ignore, 196. 
 
 Iliad, 54. 
 
 Implicit, 244. 
 
 Incarnation of thoughts, 119. 
 
 Inter (as affix), 230 note. 
 
 Intuitive and discursive, 159, 160. 
 
 Inversion, 190, 191. ' — 
 
 Irving, Edw., 168. 
 
 Isnard, 181. 
 
 Isocrates, 79, 94-97, 149. 
 
 Jaeobi, 181. 
 
 Jebb, 50. 
 
 Jewel, 206 note. 
 
 Johnson, 157, 158, 185 note, 188, 189, 
 
 222, 235. 
 Jones, Inigo, 136. 
 Jonson, 82, 223. 
 Julian, 99, 149. 
 Junius, Letters of, 176-179. 
 
 Kant, 32, 33, 82, 83, 160 note, 181, 
 
 182, 210, 215, 244-246. 
 Keckermannus, 143. 
 
 s, Celtic, 198, 231. 
 Language the incarnation of thought, 
 
 119. 
 Latinized phraseology, 24, 25. 
 Lay in wait, 242. 
 Leibnitz, 99, 190, 215. 
 
 Lessing, 181. 
 
 Lewes, 14 note. 
 
 Libanius, 149. 
 
 Literature, Evolution of, 83-85. 
 
 Literature of knowledge and power, 
 
 238-240. 
 Livy, 150. 
 Locke, 169. 
 
 Londonderry, Lord, 170. 
 Longinus, 150 note, 163 note. 
 Lowth, 188, 223. 
 Lucan, 151. 
 Lucian, 98. 
 Lycophron, 98. 
 Lysippus, 93. 
 Lytton, 203 note. 
 
 Machiavelli, 51. 
 
 Macpherson, 66. 
 
 Mahaffy, 44 note. 
 
 Major, 230. 
 
 Malesherbes, 219. 
 
 Mandeville, 51. 
 
 Marivaud, 228. 
 
 Maury, 181. 
 
 Mayor, 230. 
 
 Mazarin, 206. 
 
 Menage, 219. 
 
 Menander, 98. 
 
 Metre, 46-49. 
 
 Mezeray, 218. 
 
 Milton, 91, 95, 135, 136, 139, 158-162, 
 
 166, 206, 222, 226. 
 Mirabeau, 29, 181. 
 Montaigne, 180, 206 note. 
 Montesquieu, 29. 
 More, Henry, 183. 
 Murray, Lindley, 188, 223. 
 Murray (Lord Mansfield) ,115, 170. 
 Music, 3, 4, 121. 
 
 Nares, 223. 
 
 Neologisms, 195, 196, 197. 
 
 Newspapers, 7, 9, 18. 
 
 Nicetas, 12. 
 
 Novel, Decline of the, 235. 
 
250 
 
 Index. 
 
 Oaths, Greek, 69. 
 Onomatopoeia, 230. 
 Opitz, 207 note. 
 Oracles, Grecian, 47. 
 Orchestric, 230 note. 
 Organology of Style, 37-42. 
 Ornament, 213, 214. 
 Orthography, French, 208 note. 
 Ostracism, 130. 
 Ovid, 150, 204. 
 
 Facias, 144. 
 
 Painters, Italian, 83. 
 
 Painting, 3. 
 
 Painting, Landscape, 44. 
 
 Paley, 160. 
 
 Paper, Scarcity of, among the an- 
 cients, 128-130. 
 
 Parliamentary Acts, Style of, 33, 34. 
 
 Parliamentary eloquence, 169. 
 
 Parliamentary oratory, 115-118. 
 
 Pascal, 29. 
 
 Passions, Appeal to the, 139. 
 
 Paterculus, 36, 76-80, 111. 
 
 Patrocles, 140 note. 
 
 Patronage of Literature, 77. 
 
 Pedantry, 23. 
 
 Pericles, 51, 87-97, 112, 127. 
 
 Periodic style, 30, 31, 36. - 
 
 Persuasion, 139. 
 
 Petalism, 130. 
 
 Petronius, 151. 
 
 Pherecydes, 50. 
 
 Phidias, 92. 
 
 Philip, 95. 
 
 Pisistratus, 88, 126. 
 
 Pitt, 34, 116 note, 170. 
 
 Plato, 58-64, 92, 136 note, 138 note, 
 140 note, 215. 
 
 Plautus, 204. 
 
 Plenty, 242. 
 
 Pliny, 81, 151. 
 
 Plutarch, 98. 
 
 Poetic merit, Standard of, 85, 86. 
 
 Poetry, 3. 
 
 Poetry and Prose, 192, 193, 198. 
 
 Polemic, 243. 
 
 Political Economy, 216, 217. 
 
 Polybius, 98, 204. 
 
 Pope, 47, 224 note. 
 
 Posnett, 85. 
 
 Priestly, 223. 
 
 Printing, 128. 
 
 Prior, 189 note. 
 
 Property, 230. 
 
 Propriety, 230. 
 
 Prose, Development of, 43-69; and 
 
 poetry, 192, 193, 198. 
 Psychology, 108. 
 Publication, 121 ff. 
 Publicity, 122-124. 
 Pulpit eloquence, 184, 185. 
 ' Pulpit,' the Mohammedan, 45. 
 Pulteney, 169. 
 Punctuation, 38. 
 
 Qusestio finita and qusestio infinita, 
 
 116. 
 Quintilian, 11, 81, 138, 140 note, 148, 
 
 151, 163 note. 
 
 Kaleigh, 167 note. 
 
 Eapin, 73. 
 
 'Reading- short,' 34-36. 
 
 Rhetoric, 103, 104. 
 
 Rhetorica Utens and Rhetorica Do- 
 
 cens, 241. 
 Rhetoric, Aristotle's, 103, 104. 
 Rhetoric denned, 138, 139, 146, 147. 
 Rhetoric, French, 184, 185. 
 Rhetoric, Spanish, 183. 
 Richter, 161, 231. 
 Rollin, 73. 
 Romanticists, 227. 
 Rosa, Salvator, 183 note. 
 Rousseau, 4, 29, 152. 
 
 Salmasius, 187. 
 Sappho, 98 note. 
 Saxon and Latin, 228. 
 Scaliger, 66, 187. 
 Schiller, 83, 209 note. 
 
Index. 
 
 251 
 
 Sehlegel, 181, 187. 
 
 Scholastic Philosophy, 107-109, 112. 
 
 Soipio, 99. 
 
 Scopas, 212. 
 
 Selden, 206 note. 
 
 Seneca, 81, 103, 151, 204. 
 
 Sensuous, 230 note. 
 
 Sentences, French, 29. 
 
 Sentences, involved, 20, 33. 
 
 Shaftesbury, 169. 
 
 Shakspere, 41, 82, 85, 136, 137, 166 
 
 note, 206 note, 223, 224 note. 
 Sheridan, 171, 173. 
 Simonides, 98 note. 
 Simplicity, 191, 192. 
 Slang, 196, 224. 
 Smiglecius, 143. 
 Smollet, 218. 
 
 Socrates, 58-64, 92, 140 note. 
 Solon, 126. 
 Sophocles, 44 note, 79, 92, 105, 203 
 
 note. 
 South, 167. 
 Spalding, 141 note. 
 Spanish Ehetoric, 183. 
 Spencer, 74 note, 158 note, 229 note. 
 Spengel, 103 note. 
 Spenser, 82, 206 note. 
 Spironi, 29 note. 
 Steel, Mme. de, 26. 
 Stateliness, 191, 192. 
 Stephen, L., 85. 
 Stock), 141 note. 
 Style, British, 5-10. - -^ 
 Style, Absolute value of, 212.1 
 Style as a fine art, 211-214. \1 
 Style, Functions of, 212-215. \ 
 
 Style defined, 235. " 
 
 Suidas, 218 note. 
 Symonds, 85 note. 
 
 Tacitus, 51, 81. 
 
 Tautology, 7, 188, 189. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 161, 163-166, 185, 
 186, 206 note. 
 
 Tertullian, 151. 
 
 Theatre, Greek, as means of Publi- 
 cation, 125 f. 
 
 Themistocles, 87. 
 
 Theocritus, 98. 
 
 Theodoras (of Byzantium), 140note. 
 
 Theodoras (of Gadara) , 140 note. 
 
 Theremin, 140 note. 
 
 Thucydides, 50-52, 92. 
 
 Timeous, 242. 
 
 Tragedy, 44. 
 
 Understanding, 173, 174. 
 ' Unreliable,' 88. 
 
 Value, Doctrine of, 63. 
 Vaugelas, 188. 
 Verse, 193. 
 Virgil, 150 note. 
 Volkmann, 103 note. 
 Voltaire, 29. 
 
 Wallis, 188, 223. 
 
 Walpole, 116 note, 170. 
 
 Webster, Noah, 223. 
 
 Whately, 128, 138 note, 139, 140 
 
 note, 148, 186-194. 
 Wieland, 82, 83. 
 Williams, B. O., 17 note. 
 Women, Educated, 10-15. 
 Wordsworth, 61, 119, 143, 188, 235. 
 
 Yankee names, 12. 
 Young, 183. 
 
 Xenophon, 58-64, 92. 
 
-* 
 
 Allyn &> Bacon . . . Boston. 
 
 Select 
 Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 Edited by 
 Samuel Thurber. 
 
 i2mo, cloth, 70 cts. ; boards, 50 cts. 
 
 This selection comprises the essays on Milton, Bun- 
 yan, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Madame D'Arblay, 
 thus giving illustrations both of Macaulay's earlier 
 and of his later style. It aims to put into the hands 
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 shall be eminently interesting to read and study in 
 class, and which shall serve as models of clear and 
 vigorous writing. 
 
 The subjects of the essays are such as to bring them 
 into close relation with the study of general English 
 Literature. 
 
 The annotation is intended to serve as a guide and 
 stimulus to research rather than as a substitute for 
 research. The notes therefore are few in number. 
 Only when an allusion of Macaulay is decidedly diffi- 
 cult to verify does the editor give the result of his 
 own investigations. In all other cases he leads the 
 pupil to make investigation for himself, believing that 
 a good method in English, as in other studies, should 
 leave as much free play as possible to the activity of 
 the learner. 
 
 4- 
 
* , ■- . * 
 
 Thurber's Macaulay. 
 
 Hon. W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Education, 
 Washington, D. C. : Permit me to thank you for the 
 copy of the new book containing select essays of 
 Macaulay, together with notes and interesting appen- 
 dix, and to congratulate you on the good taste and 
 the fine literary sense with which the work is edited. 
 The introduction, although short, contains some of 
 the best things to aid the teacher of literature. 
 
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 bury, Mass. : I thank you for sending me " Select 
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 tempted to read over once more these most delight- 
 ful essays, and the novel mode of editing has inter- 
 ested me very much. The introduction is excellent 
 in matter and in manner, and the notes are of the 
 right sort. I hope nobody hereafter will have the 
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 been accustomed to. I shall introduce the book at 
 once into my school for reading in my first class. 
 
 E. H. Russell, Principal of the State Normal 
 School, Worcester, Mass. . The introduction is excel- 
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 follow it. 
 
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 Attyn 6° Bacon . . . Boston. 
 
 C. B. Wright, Professor in Middlebury College, 
 Vermont: Mr. Thurber's work is always excellent, 
 and he has done this in what seems to me an espe- 
 cially praiseworthy fashion. His theory of literary 
 editing is sound. I shall show my appreciation of 
 the book by ordering very soon seyeral copies for 
 some work I have in hand. 
 
 Professor Edward S. Joynes, South Carolina Col- 
 lege : The notes are made with consummate skill to 
 stimulate by help and to help by stimulating. 
 
 Professor Charles J. Little, Northwestern Uni- 
 versity, Evanston, III. . I owe you thanks for a copy 
 of Thurber's Macaulay that you were kind enough to 
 send me. Truly a beautiful book and wisely edited. 
 Mr. Thurber's notes are, for their purpose, I am 
 tempted to say, perfect. The introduction is just 
 what might be expected of a teacher who makes of 
 literature a well of pleasure and a source of power. 
 
 Walter A. Edwards, Principal of High School, 
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 editions which seek to relieve the pupil and teacher 
 of all necessity for thought or work, I have been 
 driven to simple text editions, but I disagree with 
 Mr. Thurber, in preferring Macaulay as he annotates 
 him, to an edition without notes. 
 
 Professor Francis B. Gummere, Haverford Col- 
 lege, Pa. .- The editing is admirably done, a clean and 
 conscientious piece of work ; and it will undoubtedly 
 aid the cause in which we are all b Boring, — forma- 
 tion of a love of sound literature among our pupils. 
 
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Thurber's ' Addison. 
 
 Select Essays of Addison, 
 
 With Macaulay's Essay on Addison's 
 Life and Writings. 
 
 Edited hy 
 
 Samuel Thurber. 
 Cloth, 80 cents. Boards, 60 cents. 
 
 The purpose of this selection is to interest young 
 students in Addison as a moral teacher, a painter 
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 gether such papers from the Spectator, the Tatter, 
 the Guardian, and the Freeholder as will prove 
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 representation, and the beautiful hymns are all given. 
 
 By omission of the least essential parts of the 
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 to modern standards have been carefully omitted. 
 
 Trusting to his own experience as a teacher, the 
 editor has deemed it wise somewhat to shorten the 
 essay of Macaulay. This he has effected by the omis- 
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 their character, in which the essayist displays his his- 
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 By George Henry Lewes. 
 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Fred N. Scott. 
 
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 The value of the present edition is greatly increased 
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 i Spencer's Philosophy of Style 
 
 and 
 
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 I Edited by F. N. Scott. 
 
 ! l2mo. Price, 45 cents. 
 
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Keeler's English Composition. 
 
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 Harriet L. Keeler. 
 
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 Historical 
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