Something of extravagance there may be in those brilliant clusters of romantic words that are everywhere found in the work of Shakespeare, or Spenser, or Keats, but they are the natural leafage and fruitage of a luxuriant imagination, which, lacking these, could not attain to its full height.Only by the energy of the arts can a voice be given to the subtleties and raptures of emotional experience; ordinary social intercourse affords neither opportunity nor means for this fervour of self-revelation.And if the highest reach of poetry is often to be found in the use of common colloquialisms, charged with the intensity of restrained passion, this is not due to a greater sincerity of expression, but to the strength derived from dramatic situation.Where speech spends itself on its subject, drama stands idle; but where the dramatic stress is at its greatest, three or four words may enshrine all the passion of the moment.Romeo's apostrophe from under the balcony -O, speak again, bright Angel! for thou art As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him, When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, And sails upon the bosom of the air -though it breathe the soul of romance, must yield, for sheer effect, to his later soliloquy, spoken when the news of Juliet's death is brought to him, Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
And even the constellated glories of PARADISE LOST are less moving than the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his approaching end -So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself;My race of glory run and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest.
Here are simple words raised to a higher power and animated with a purer intention than they carry in ordinary life.It is this unfailing note of sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that has made poetry the teacher of prose.Phrases which, to all seeming, might have been hit on by the first comer, are often cut away from their poetical context and robbed of their musical value that they may be transferred to the service of prose.They bring with them, down to the valley, a wafted sense of some region of higher thought and purer feeling.They bear, perhaps, no marks of curious diction to know them by.Whence comes the irresistible pathos of the lines -I cannot but remember such things were That were most precious to me?
The thought, the diction, the syntax, might all occur in prose.
Yet when once the stamp of poetry has been put upon a cry that is as old as humanity, prose desists from rivalry, and is content to quote.Some of the greatest prose-writers have not disdained the help of these borrowed graces for the crown of their fabric.In this way De Quincey widens the imaginative range of his prose, and sets back the limits assigned to prose diction.So too, Charles Lamb, interweaving the stuff of experience with phrases quoted or altered from the poets, illuminates both life and poetry, letting his sympathetic humour play now on the warp of the texture, and now on the woof.The style of Burke furnishes a still better example, for the spontaneous evolution of his prose might be thought to forbid the inclusion of borrowed fragments.Yet whenever he is deeply stirred, memories of Virgil, Milton, or the English Bible rise to his aid, almost as if strong emotion could express itself in no other language.Even the poor invectives of political controversy gain a measure of dignity from the skilful application of some famous line; the touch of the poet's sincerity rests on them for a moment, and seems to lend them an alien splendour.It is like the blessing of a priest, invoked by the pious, or by the worldly, for the good success of whatever business they have in hand.Poetry has no temporal ends to serve, no livelihood to earn, and is under no temptation to cog and lie: wherefore prose pays respect to that loftier calling, and that more unblemished sincerity.
Insincerity, on the other hand, is the commonest vice of style.It is not to be avoided, except in the rarest cases, by those to whom the written use of language is unfamiliar; so that a shepherd who talks pithy, terse sense will be unable to express himself in a letter without having recourse to the READY LETTER-WRITER - "This comes hoping to find you well, as it also leaves me at present" -and a soldier, without the excuse of ignorance, will describe a successful advance as having been made against "a thick hail of bullets." It permeates ordinary journalism, and all writing produced under commercial pressure.It taints the work of the young artist, caught by the romantic fever, who glories in the wealth of vocabulary discovered to him by the poets, and seeks often in vain for a thought stalwart enough to wear that glistering armour.Hence it is that the masters of style have always had to preach restraint, self-denial, austerity.His style is a man's own; yet how hard it is to come by! It is a man's bride, to be won by labours and agonies that bespeak a heroic lover.If he prove unable to endure the trial, there are cheaper beauties, nearer home, easy to be conquered, and faithless to their conqueror.
Taking up with them, he may attain a brief satisfaction, but he will never redeem his quest.
As a body of practical rules, the negative precepts of asceticism bring with them a certain chill.The page is dull; it is so easy to lighten it with some flash of witty irrelevance: the argument is long and tedious, why not relieve it by wandering into some of those green enclosures that open alluring doors upon the wayside?
