The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
In the next breath we hear that "Mr. Pinkney has a continual
appearance of natural superciliousness and affected courtesy."
_Continual_--and yet afterwards "his manner is exceedingly arrogant
and unpropitiating;" and his deportment had been already described as
"_brutal, arrogant, full of sound and fury, accompanied by the rude
and violent gestures of a vulgar fellow_." One moment he is a giant,
not only _metaphorically_, but in sober truth, if we may judge from
his stentorian lungs, which have caused the author's whole system to
jar--and from those violent gesticulations, which indicate uncommon
personal strength;--the next, he turns out to be only five feet ten,
and a petit maitre, and affectedly courtly and conciliatory; and yet
"nothing could make a gentleman of him; he can neither look, act,
_speak_, sit, nor _talk_ like one." Notwithstanding all this
scurrility and abuse of Mr. Pinkney's person, the author is not yet
exhausted, but lavishes more upon his intellect. "The physical powers
of Mr. Pinkney," he says, "are to my notion, strictly correspondent
with his intellectual ones; both arc solid, strong and substantial,
but without grace, dignity or loftiness." Loftiness! the same man who
has such "prodigious elevation and amplitude of mind," "and both have
_a dash of fat English dandyism_." I confess myself wholly at a loss
to comprehend what the fat dandyism of the intellectual powers is. A
man's mind might, by a forced metaphor, be said to be dandyish,
perhaps; but a _fat mind_, is a solecism in words wholly inadmissible,
I think. "His style of eloquence," it is added, "is a most
disagreeable and unnatural compound of the worst faults of the worst
speakers." "He is said to resemble Lord Erskine as he was in the day
of his power: it is a libel on Erskine, who was himself a libel on the
reputation of his country as a speaker." "The language of Mr. Pinkney
does resemble that of Lord Erskine; his reasoning is about as
forcible." If the term style here be the manner of speaking
appropriate to particular characters, I have shown that the censure is
equally applicable to Demosthenes, the prince of orators, who, in
addition to his vehemence, was so ungraceful in his motions, that it
was necessary for him to practice with a naked sword hanging over his
shoulder; and therefore to compare Demosthenes to Lord Erskine is a
libel on Lord Erskine, himself a libel on his country as a
speaker--and _argal_, as Shakspeare says, Demosthenes is inferior to
English orators. If, again, the word style mean the manner of writing
with regard to language, these sentences would involve a
contradiction, and Mr. Pinkney is like and unlike Lord Erskine at the
same time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account