Style- the Art of Writing Well

by F L Lucas

  Therefore, if you wish your writing to seem good, your character must seem at least partly so. And since in the long run deception is likely to be found out, [37] your character had better not only seem good, but be it. Those who publish make themselves public in more ways than they sometimes realize. Authors may sell their books: but they give themselves away.

  Does this, I wonder, seem very far-fetched? Yet it is not so new a view, after all. I find something not very different in that dry-minded person, Aristotle (though he is talking, of course, only of oratory). ‘But since the art of speech aims at producing certain judgements … the speaker must not only look to his words, to see they are cogent and convincing, he must also present himself as a certain type of person and put those who judge him in a certain frame of mind. … For it makes all the difference to men’s opinions whether they feel friendly or hostile, irritated or indulgent. … To carry conviction, a speaker needs three qualities – for there are three things that convince us, apart from actual proof – good sense, good character, and good will towards his hearers.’ [38] Such stress on sympathy and personality may seem to come a little strangely from the cold and detached Aristotle. But it is only the more telling for that.

  Some three centuries later, the less prosaic ‘Longinus’ glimpsed essentially the same truth (though I wish he had not mixed his metaphors): ‘Height of style is the echo of a great personality.’ [39] And when the noble simplicity of Vauvenargues uttered its corollary as applied to the critic: ‘Il faut avoir de l’âme pour avoir du goût’ (‘To have taste one must have a soul’); when Buffon penned his much quoted, and misquoted, ‘Le style est l’homme même’ (‘Style is the man himself’); [40] when Yeats described style as ‘but high breeding in words and in argument’, they were all restating this constantly forgotten point.

  Napoleon was no sentimental aesthete. But even he, when asked to appoint some person to a post, replied, if I remember, ‘Has he written anything? Que je voie son style!’ – ‘Let me see his style!’

  The wisdom of China, indeed, realized this truth long ago. The Book of Odes, preserved for us by Confucius, includes popular ballads of the feudal states, which were periodically forwarded to the Son of Heaven so that, we are told, the Imperial Musicians might infer from them the moral state of the people. Plato would have approved. Confucius himself (says a fanciful tradition) thus studied a certain tune on his lute. After ten days he observed, ‘I have learned the tune, but I cannot get the rhythm’; after several days more, ‘I have the rhythm, but not the composer’s intention’; after several days more, ‘I still cannot visualize his person’; and finally, ‘Now I have seen one deep in thought gazing up to far heights, with intense longing. Now I see him – dark, tall, with whimsical eyes and the ambition of a world-ruler. Who could he be but King Wen the Civilized?’ [41] Even in judging calligraphy and painting, according to Lin Yutang, ‘the highest criterion is not whether the artist shows good technique, but whether he has or has not a high personality.’ [42 ]

  All this may seem strangely remote from modern ideas. But it has a foundation of fact too often forgotten by most criticism; though Johnson and Sainte-Beuve kept it always in mind.

  Return to Aristotle. The orator, he says, has to consider three things: the statements he utters; the attitude of his audience; the impression made by himself. This analysis can easily be extended from oratory to literature at large. Any literary writer is concerned with (A) statements, (B) feelings.

  (A) He makes his statements in a certain way.

  (B) (1) He arouses certain feelings in his audience [43] about his statements (a) intentionally, (b) unintentionally. (2) He reveals certain feelings of his own (a) intentionally (unless he is deliberately impersonal), (b) unintentionally. (3) He arouses certain feelings in his audience about himself and his feelings (a) intentionally, (b) unintentionally.

  In short, a writer may be doing seven different things at once; four of them, consciously. Literature is complicated.

  Consider, for example, Mark Antony’s speech in the Forum.

  (A) Statements. Caesar has been killed by honourable men, who say he was ambitious.

  (B) Feelings. (1) While pretending deference to the murderers, Antony rouses his hearers to rage against them. (2) He reveals his own feelings. (a) (Intentionally): loyal resentment. (b) (Unintentionally): secret ambition. (3) He arouses feelings in his audience towards himself. (a) (Intentionally): he poses as the moderate statesmen, yet loyal friend. (b) (Unintentionally): he moves the more knowing theatre-audience to ironic amusement at his astuteness.

  The theatre-goer who knows the play, or Roman history, has Antony at a disadvantage. But even among Antony’s audience in the Forum one can imagine a shrewd observer here and there seeing through his splendid rhetoric. For a writer, likewise, such shrewder minds are always there in wait. The readers who read between the lines are the readers worth winning. But if the writer forgets them, if his mood in writing is mean or peevish or petty or vain or false, no cleverness and no technique are likely, in the end, to save him. That is why I repeat that the first thing in style is character. It is not easy to fool all one’s readers all the time.

  Consider side by side these two passages – letters to noble lords. (The first has become a lasting part of English Literature.)

  Seven years, My Lord, have now past since I waited in your outward Rooms or was repulsed from your Door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which It is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of Publication without one Act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before.

  The Shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.

  Is not a Patron, [44] My Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a Man struggling for Life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my Labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, till I am solitary and cannot impart it, till I am known, and do not want it.

  I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligation where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.

  Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any Favourer of Learning I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less, for I have been long wakened from that Dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation,

  My Lord,

  Your Lordship’s most humble,

  Most Obedient Servant,

  Sam: Johnson.

  And now for a different picture:

  My Lord,

  I feel that I am taking a liberty for which I shall have but small excuse and no justification to offer, if I am not fortunate enough to find one in your Lordship’s approbation of my design; and unless you should condescend to regard the writer as addressing himself to your Genius rather than your Rank, and graciously permit me to forget my total inacquaintance with your Lordship personally in my familiarity with your other more permanent Self, to which your works have introduced me. If indeed I had not in them discovered that Balance of Thought and Feeling, of Submission and Mastery; that one sole unfleeting music which is never of yesterday, but still remaining reproduces itself, and powers akin to itself in the minds of other men: – believe me, my Lord! I not only could not have hazarded this Boldness, but my own sense of propriety would have precluded the very Wish. A sort of pre-established good will, like that with which the Swan instinctively takes up the weakling cygnet into the Hollow between its wings, I knew I might confidently look for from one who is indeed a Poet: were I but assured that your Lordship had ever thought of me as a fellow-laborer in the same vineyard, and
as not otherwise unworthy of your notice. And surely a fellow-laborer I have been, and a co-inheritor of the same Bequest, tho’ of a smaller portion; and tho’ your Lordship’s ampler Lot is on the sunny side, while mine has lain upon the North, my growing Vines gnawed down by Asses, and my richest and raciest clusters carried off and spoilt by the plundering Fox. Excuse my Lord! the length and ‘petitionary’ solemnity of this Preface, as attributable to the unquiet state of my spirits, under which I write this Letter, and my fears as to its final reception. Anxiety makes us all ceremonious …

  The contrast is surely startling. One passage seems superb; the other, abject. Yet each is from the hand of genius.

  Johnson’s statement of fact is simple: Chesterfield is claiming gratitude for helping him too little and too late. The feelings Johnson seeks to stir in his audience are also simple. (By ‘his audience’ I do not mean Chesterfield, whom he merely wished to put in his place, but the public to whom, in fact, he is appealing against aristocratic arrogance. For his letter became ‘the talk of the town’.) His readers are to feel anger towards a neglectful patron, and admiration for worth which no poverty could depress. It is, in fine (much as Johnson would have disliked being compared to Americans or republicans) a Declaration of Independence in the republic of letters.

  As for Johnson’s own feelings, what he reveals is the sturdy resentment of an honest man; and if one senses between the lines certain other feelings – satisfaction, that Chesterfield’s ill-treatment has relieved him of any obligations; pride, that he has accomplished his great work alone; triumph, that he can so trenchantly settle an old score – after all, these are perfectly human, and do him no discredit.

  Therefore the letter as a whole is brilliantly effective. Full of art, it yet seems natural – for art has become second nature. Those balanced antitheses remain as much a part of Johnson as the majestic see-saw of his body when he perused a book; the irony vibrates; and the reader exults each time he reaches that sonorous Roman triplet – ‘cannot enjoy it … cannot impart it [45] … do not want it’. It is hardly a very Christian letter, nor a very humble one; but it is the anger of a very honest man.

  Only one note in it, to me, rings false. What is this shepherd doing here, who found Love a native of the rocks? What possessed Johnson, that contemner of Lycidas, that ceaseless mocker at the falsetto absurdities of the pastoral, to pose himself here with Arcadian pipe and crook? Drum and cudgel would have been more in his line. And Lord Chesterfield as a fickle Amaryllis? – Chesterfield, who looked more like a dwarf Cyclops!

  But this false note, if false note it is, lasts only for one sentence. Contrast the second letter, written to Byron by Coleridge in March 1815. [46] Coleridge was, I suppose, as clever a man as Johnson – many would say cleverer; he was, at rare intervals, a finer poet; how could he here write so ill? So miscalculate his whole effect? For Byron, one imagines, must have read it with a pitying smile. No doubt it is easier to write with dignity letters refusing help than begging it. Yet it can be done. Read the appeal written – not in vain – by the despairing Crabbe to Burke. But this fulsome twaddle about weakling cygnets chirping for the hollow of his lordship’s wings was surely not only feeble but also false and foolish. [47] Heep and Pecksniff. Perhaps Coleridge dimly felt that, and was ashamed, and thereby grew demoralized in his style. At all events, my point is simply that this piece of writing is ruined, above all, by the personality behind it – by Coleridge’s weaker self. A good deal of difference between these two Samuels. No need to dwell on it – ‘look and pass’. [48]

  Naturally no fineness of character is likely to make an ungifted man write well (though I think that even this sometimes happens); but it can make a gifted one write far better. It is, I believe, personality above all that sets Virgil and Horace higher than Catullus and Ovid; Chaucer than Dryden; [49] Shakespeare than his contemporaries. Many Elizabethans could write at times blank verse as enchanting as his; but he alone could conceive a Hamlet or an Imogen. Or again we may read of Goldsmith’s Vicar or Sterne’s Uncle Toby with simple pleasure and amusement; but, if we stop to think, we must surely recognize also that, whatever faults or foibles Goldsmith and Sterne displayed in real life, yet they had characters fine enough to imagine these types of human nature at its most lovable. And it is for this above all that they are remembered. [50]

  Again, though these are more questionable and more personal preferences, I find myself preferring Montaigne to Bacon, Flaubert and Hardy to Wilde and Shaw, as being fundamentally more honest characters; Sterne and Voltaire to Swift and Rousseau, as having more gaiety and good humour; Tennyson and Arnold to Browning and Meredith, as personalities more sensitive and more self-controlled. Or, to take a more recent example, amid the criticism of the last half-century, with all its acidulated sciolists and balderdashing decadents, dizzy with their own intellectual altitude, why is it, for me, such a relief to turn back to Desmond MacCarthy? Because his writing was not only witty and amusing, but also wise and good.

  ‘And yet,’ you may exclaim, ‘think of the good writers who have been bad men – Villon, Rousseau, Byron, Baudelaire. … ’

  But I do not find this matter quite so simple. It is surely a little summary to dismiss a man in a monosyllable as ‘bad’. No doubt Kingsley, when asked by one of his children who Heine was, is said to have replied, ‘A bad man, my dear, a bad man.’ And Carlyle, if I remember, dismissed Heine as ‘that blackguard’. But do we take such judgements seriously?

  On ethics, as on aesthetics, men’s judgements have varied wildly from age to age, without appearing any nearer to agreement. On certain points, indeed, there has been, since history began, surprising unanimity. Avarice, treachery, cowardice have had few admirers at any time. But in the Middle Ages, for instance, one of the deadliest sins was a refusal to believe certain abstruse theological details, hard to comprehend and impossible to establish; or to believe differently about them. Again in nineteenth-century England some people almost reduced sin to sex – a hazardous simplification, in reaction from which many of their grandchildren made sex their only god. Therefore I should myself prefer to keep the term ‘bad’ for moral qualities or actions that cause suffering to others without any justifying counter-balance of good.

  Secondly, every man is many-sided – as Whitman said of himself, ‘I am large, I contain multitudes.’ Nor does this complicated blend of good and bad remain static. Character is not only a compound of extremely various qualities, but the qualities themselves vary from year to year, even from hour to hour. The Spaniards will wisely say of a man, ‘He was brave that day.’ We are all at war with ourselves; if an ‘individual’ meant one literally ‘undivided’, no such creature would exist.

  Clearly Coleridge wrote The Ancient Mariner in a mood very different from that in which he wrote his miserable letter to Byron (which Johnson, indeed, could not have written in any mood).

  For all these reasons, judgements of character must remain extremely precarious. Yet it is often necessary to make them. A man with no sense of values is as crippled as a man cramped with prejudice.

  Thirdly it has to be remembered in judging writers, that they often do – and indeed should – write with the best side of their character, and at their best moments. (It is indeed a commonplace that authors seem often less admirable and less interesting than their books.) Thus Montaigne confesses that his Essays kept him up to the mark in life, lest he should seem to live less uprightly than he wrote. Again, the Arabic poet al-Mutanabbi (d. 965), returning from Persia, was attacked near Kufa by the Beni Asad, and worsted; as he wheeled to flee, his slave said, ‘Never be it told that you turned in flight, you that wrote:

  I am known to the horse-troop, the night, and the desert’s expanse;

  Not more to the paper and pen than the sword and the lance.’

  And al-Mutanabbi, shamed by his own verses, rode back into the battle, and fell. Poésie oblige.

  No doubt a writer’s worse qualities
also are likely to get into his work – and to betray themselves there. But what still lives in Villon, ne’er-do-well as he may have been, is his bitter honesty of mind; his pity for his comrades swaying bird-pecked on the gallows, for his old mother shuddering before the fires of Hell, for the withered hags regretting their lost April, for the faded beauty of women dead long ago. What still lives in Rousseau, that walking museum of pathological curiosities – Narcissist, exhibitionist, and persecution-maniac – is his vivid sense for Nature, for simplicity, for the injustice and falsity of a decadent ‘civilization’ riding on the necks of the poor. The histrionic melancholy and melodrama of Byron are long dead; but not the prose and verse he wrote in blazing scorn of shams and in detestation of tyranny. The carrion-side of Baudelaire is rotten; but not his tragic compassion for human waste and suffering and shame.

  In short, where good writers have been commonly judged bad characters, one may sometimes answer that the code by which they were judged was narrow; or that the writers were better men in their studies than in the active world; or that they were better men at the moments when they wrote their best work.

  On the other hand, when Croker in his review of Macaulay, as Rogers put it, ‘attempted murder and committed suicide’, that was because the malicious feelings Croker betrayed in himself more than neutralized those that he tried to rouse in his readers. Well did Bentley say that no man was demolished but by himself; though unfortunately he also did his best to demonstrate it by his own edition of Milton.

  In his Commentaires – ‘la Bible du Soldat’ Henri IV called them – Blaise de Montluc (1502–77) describes his famous defence of Siena, against the forces of Charles the Fifth, in 1554–5, and the account he afterwards gave of it to Henri II. Montluc, a fiery Gascon famous for his choler, who might have been a ruder grandfather of d’Artagnan, and showed perhaps a touch of our own Montgomery, had yet astonished men by the patience and finesse with which, through those long months of famine and peril, he had steadied the Sienese to resist. How had he done it?