Appreciations, with an Essay on StylePater, Walter
Philosophy
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style
Pater, Walter
English literature -- History and criticism; Style, Literary
will be well aware of physical science; science also attaining, in its
turn, its true literary ideal. And then, as the scholar is nothing
without the historic sense, he will be apt to restore not really
obsolete or really worn-out words, but the finer edge of words still in
use: ascertain, communicate, discover--words like these it has been
part of our "business" to misuse. And still, as language was made for
man, he will be no authority for correctnesses which, limiting freedom
of utterance, were yet but accidents in their origin; as if one vowed
not to say "its," which ought to have been in Shakespeare; "his"
"hers," for inanimate objects, being but a barbarous and really
inexpressive survival. Yet we have known many things like this. Racy
Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix
readily with those long, savoursome, Latin words, rich in "second
intention." In this late day certainly, no critical process can be
conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism we
have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time. How
illustrative of monosyllabic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the
phraseology of science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the
writings of Tennyson; yet with what a fine, fastidious scholarship
throughout!
A scholar writing for the scholarly, he will of course leave something
to the willing intelligence of his reader. "To go preach to the first
passer-by," says Montaigne, "to become tutor to the ignorance of the
first I meet, is a thing I abhor;" a thing, in fact, naturally
distressing to the scholar, who will therefore ever be shy of offering
uncomplimentary assistance to the reader's wit. To really strenuous
minds there is a pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a continuous
effort on their part, to be rewarded by securer and more intimate grasp
of the author's sense. Self-restraint, a skilful economy of means,
ascesis, that too has a beauty of its own; and for the reader supposed
there will be an aesthetic satisfaction in that frugal closeness of
style which makes the most of a word, in the exaction from every
sentence of a precise relief, in the just spacing out of word to
thought, in the logically filled space connected always with the
delightful sense of difficulty overcome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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