English Prose: A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice of the Art of Writing
General
English Prose: A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice of the Art of Writing
English language -- Rhetoric; English language -- Style; English prose literature; Readers; Report writing -- Problems, exercises, etc.
The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage,
that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the
world over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a
practised man relies on the language of the first. If the man is off his
center, the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your companion,
whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess it.
There is a look by which a man shows he is going to say a good thing,
and a look when he has said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine
offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye.
How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by
the lips! One comes away from a company, in which, it may easily happen,
he has said nothing, and no important remark has been addressed to him,
and yet, if in sympathy with the society he shall not have a sense of
this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from
him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more
admission into the man than blue-berries. Others are liquid and
deep,--wells that a man might fall into;--others are aggressive and
devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, and
require crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, to protect
individuals against them. The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling
under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lacedaemon;
'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting eyes,
prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate,--some of good, and some of
sinister omen. The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in
beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the
will before it can be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each
man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense
scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man
should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. Whoever looked on
him would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were
generous and universal. The reason why men do not obey us, is because
they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features
have their own. A man finds room in the few square inches of the face
for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his
history, and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will
tell you how significant a feature is the nose; how its forms express
strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius
Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest "the terrors of the beak." What
refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! "Beware you don't
laugh," said the wise mother, "for then you show all your faults."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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