Style- the Art of Writing Well

by F L Lucas

  – Landor

  Johnson offers a curious mixture. With him, as with Gibbon, Burke, and Rousseau, followed by Chateaubriand and the Romantics, prose reverts to an ampler style. Johnson himself became notorious as a portent of circumlocution: ‘Network. Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.’ Here Sir Thomas Browne might have bestowed a ghostly smile on his pupil. On the other hand Johnson’s best things, both in his talk and in his later writing, are admirably brief. [129] How did he feel at the failure of his Irene? ‘Like the Monument.’ A Mr. Pot had called his Irene ‘the finest tragedy of modern times’ – ‘If Pot says so, Pot lies.’ And after hearing Irene read aloud in later years, he said only, ‘Sir, I thought it had been better’ – and left the room. His summary of ‘the two most engaging powers of an author’ – ‘New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new’ – embodies in eleven words perhaps the most essential difference between Classic and Romantic. His dictum on poetic diction, ‘Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet’, seems to me more to the point than all the laboured pages of dispute that were devoted to the question by Wordsworth and Coleridge. And it was Johnson who imagined that all books might one day be written ‘aphoristically’ (as Nietzsche was, indeed, to write much of his philosophy).

  Of nineteenth-century English writers few so loved brevity as, at times, Macaulay. Naturally he had sense enough to choose his times; but when the moment called, he could be as headlong as the eccentric Peterborough whom he describes in his War of the Succession in Spain: ‘The English government could not understand him. He was so eccentric that they gave him no credit for the judgment which he really possessed. One day he took towns with horse-soldiers; then again he turned some hundreds of infantry into cavalry at a moment’s notice. He obtained his political intelligence chiefly by means of love affairs, and filled his despatches with epigrams.’ You may call this ‘snip-snap’; but I think they are rather sheep who object to those brilliant shears. I find his breathlessness often admirably suited to the impetuous pace of war. The Spanish treasure-fleet has run into Vigo; yet Spanish red-tape allowed treasure-fleets to unlade only at Cadiz.

  The Chamber of Commerce at Cadiz, in the true spirit of monopoly, refused, even at this conjuncture, to bate one jot of its privilege. The matter was referred to the Council of the Indies. That body deliberated and hesitated just a day too long. Some feeble preparations for defence were made. Two ruined towers at the mouth of the bay of Vigo were garrisoned by a few ill-armed and untrained rustics; a boom was thrown across the entrance of the basin; and a few French ships of war, which had convoyed the galleons from America, were moored within. But all was to no purpose. The English ships broke the boom; Ormond and his soldiers scaled the forts; the French burned their ships, and escaped to the shore. The conquerors shared some millions of dollars; some millions more were sunk. When all the galleons had been captured or destroyed came an order in due form allowing them to unload.

  With Macaulay there comes into my mind – oddly, it may seem – another nineteenth-century master of brevity, though of a graver and more iron kind. I mean that often admirable writer and talker, the Duke of Wellington.

  (To an officer asking reinforcements.) ‘Tell him to die where he stands.’

  (To an officer asking an inordinate prolongation of leave from the Cape.) ‘Sell [130] or sail.’

  (When French Marshals turned their backs on him in Paris.) ‘I have seen their backs before.’

  And when the Duke was asked to suggest three possible names for the post of C.-in-C. India, he simply took a piece of paper and wrote three times ‘Napier’.

  Here was a man whom the ancient Spartans might have honoured with the freedom of Lacedaemon. [131]

  In our own time I know no better example to illustrate the virtues I mean than the concision of Lytton Strachey’s Portraits in Miniature. On the whole I think we are less wordy than Victorians, yet often wordier than we need be. One would expect broadcasting, with its narrow time-limits, to encourage succinctness; but I cannot say that I see, or hear, many signs of this. Even with only twenty minutes before them, speakers ramble round their theme instead of springing at its throat. It was a very wise Scottish professor who always asked his pupils, when they brought their essays, ‘Now did ye remember to tear up that first page?’ Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether books would not gain if their authors had first to telegraph them at their own expense. [132]

  Brevity can give grace; it can give force; but it can also give rapidity – a more innocent form of that exhilaration of speed to which we sacrifice five thousand lives a year on our roads. To watch a film that moves too slowly, to follow a speaker or writer who thinks too slowly, can be both boring and exhausting; just as walking two miles at two miles an hour can be more tiring than thrice the distance at twice the speed. Here is an admirably rapid little sketch from the sardonic Burton. [133]

  But to your farther content, Ile tell you a tale. In Moronia pìa, or Moronia faelix, I know not whether, nor how long since, nor in what Cathedrall Church, a fat Prebend fell void. The carcasse scarce cold, many sutors were up in an instant. The first had rich friends, a good purse; and he was resolved to out-bid any man before he would lose it; every man supposed he should carry it. The second was My Lord Bishops Chaplain (in whose gift it was); and he thought it his due to have it. The third was nobly born; and he meant to get it by his great parents, patrons, and allies. The fourth stood upon his own worth; he had newly found out strange mysteries in Chymistry, and other rare inventions, which he would detect to the publike good. The fifth was a painfull preacher, and he was commended by the whole parish where he dwelt; he had all their hands to his Certificate. The sixth was the prebendaries son lately deceased; his father died in debt (for it, as they say), left a wife and many poor children. The seventh stood upon fair promises, which to him and his noble friends had been formerly made for the next place in his Lordships gift. The eighth pretended great losses, and what he had suffered for the Church, what pains he had taken at home and abroad; and besides he brought noble mens letters. The ninth had married a kinswoman, and he sent his wife to sue for him. The tenth was a forrain Doctor, a late convert, and wanted means. The eleventh would exchange for another; he did not like the formers site, could not agree with his neighbours and fellows upon any termes; he would be gone. The twelfth and last was (a suitor in conceit) a right honest, civil, sober man, an excellent scholar, and such a one as lived private in the Universitie; but he had neither means nor money to compasse it; besides he hated all such courses; he could not speak for himself, neither had he any friends to solicite his cause, and therefore made no suit, could not expect, neither did he hope for, or look after it. The good Bishop amongst the jury of competitors thus perplexed, and not yet resolved what to do, or on whom to bestow it, at the last, of his own accord, meer motion, and bountifull nature, gave it freely to the University student, altogether unknown to him but by fame; and, to be brief, the Academical Scholar had the Prebend sent him for a present. The newes was no sooner published abroad, but all good students rejoyced, and were much cheered up with it, though some would not beleeve it; others, as men amazed, said it was a miracle; but one amongst the rest thanked God for it, and said, ‘Nunc juvat tandem studiosum esse, et Deo integro corde servire.’ [134] You have heard my tale; but alas, it is but a tale, a meer fiction; ’twas never so, never like to be; and so let it rest. [135]

  Such speed is not only stimulating in itself; it also makes the reader or hearer collaborate – instead of gaping passively as an oyster, he has to get up and run. He is challenged to be quick in the uptake; and, provided the challenge is not too severe, he enjoys it.

  A similar reason underlies a fourth advantage of brevity – its power to imply things. The reader has to supply what is missing; and he relishes the result all the more because it seems partly his own. [136] Hobbes
, attacking Popish priests, becomes the smiler with the knife. He draws a parallel between priests and fairies. ‘Fairies marry not; but there be among them Incubi, that have copulation with flesh and blood. The Priests also marry not.’

  More savage is the poisoned stab at Milman, in a letter of Beddoes: ‘Mr. Milman (our poetry professor) has made me quite unfashionable here by denouncing me as “one of a villainous school”. I wish him another son.’ Or there is Talleyrand’s thrust at the too masculine Madame de Staël who had portrayed him, along with herself, in Delphine: ‘I hear that Madem de Staël has put us both in her novel, disguised as women.’ Or there is the brilliant Chinese proverb (corresponding to our ‘penny-wise, pound-foolish’): ‘It is useless to go to bed to save the light, if the result is twins.’

  The extreme case of this effectiveness in things left unsaid comes when nothing is said at all – in the eloquence of silence. In 1814, after the fall of Paris, Napoleon at Fontainebleau assembled the officers and N.C.O.s of the Division Friant and announced that he would march on the capital: ‘Je compte sur vous.’ This desperate proposal was received, not with the expected acclamations, but in complete silence. The Emperor was perturbed. But he did not know his Old Guard. They were silent, it turned out, merely because they accepted the plan as a matter of course. They saw nothing to say. Yet what words could have said so much as that silent acceptance?

  Finally, besides grace and force, rapidity and suggestiveness, there is sometimes a fifth advantage in brevity – clarity. This may seem a paradox; for it is a commonplace that brevity risks obscurity. But one has to consider not only how much the reader or hearer grasps at the time, but how much he still grasps afterwards. For then the half may prove far more effective than the whole. Lord Abinger (1769–1844) attributed his success at the bar to concentration on one vital point, without dwelling over-much on others: ‘I find if I exceed half an hour, I am always doing a mischief to my client: if I drive into the heads of the jury important matter, I drive out matter more important that I had previously lodged there.’ Writers are apt to forget this. No doubt their success depends less than a barrister’s on how much their audience remembers. But their usefulness does not. (It may be, indeed, that I have tried to pack too much into this very book.) A good writer is a man who knows not only what to write, but also what not to write. You can be clear because you are brief; brief because you are clear.

  But though it may be a counsel of perfection never to write a sentence without asking ‘Might it not be better shorter?’, brevity, like clarity, has its limitations. It is not considerate to the reader to present him continuously with matter so tersely and tensely compressed that his attention can never relax, because if he loses a word he is lost. This becomes truer still with oratory. Ben Jonson says in praise of Bacon that ‘His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss.’ [137] Very fine. But hearers do cough, and look aside. They also misunderstand, or forget. It is not good to feed horses on nothing but oats, or human beings on nothing but verbal tabloids. There remains sometimes a certain need of bulk. Though, even so, it may often be better to repeat a thing succinctly in two or three different ways than to say it once wordily.

  There is also a further point. If a style is too tense, and the reader too concentrated, he may never be able to relax – to dream; the less conscious levels of his mind may be too much suppressed; and he may begin, perhaps without knowing it, to long for a vaguer, softer atmosphere, as a traveller among the sharp outlines of Greece grows homesick for the mistier contours and more brooding distances of northern lands.

  Again, variety is a law more important even than brevity. There are few good things that one cannot have too much of, just as Athens sickened of Aristides ‘the Just’; and brief sentences (which, of course, are only one form of brevity), forcible though they may be, can easily grow deadly monotonous. Hence, in part, the contempt heaped by Milton on an asthmatic opponent, who ‘sets me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion-fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies.’ [138]

  The following passage from Bentham’s preface to the second edition (1822) of his Fragment on Government, though lively and amusing, may serve as an example of brevity carried too far, till it jerks.

  Such being the tendency, such even the effects of the work, what became of it? how happened it, that, till now, not so much as a second edition has been made of it? Questions natural enough; and satisfaction, such as can be, shall accordingly be given: words as few as possible.

  Advertisements, none. Bookseller did not, Author could not, [139] afford any. Ireland pirated. Concealment had been the plan: how advantageous has been already visible. Promise of secrecy had accordingly been exacted: parental weakness broke it. No longer a great man, the Author was now a nobody. [140] In catalogues, the name of Lind has been seen given to him. On the part of the men of politics, and in particular the men of law on all sides, whether endeavour was wanting to suppression may be imagined.

  Clearly, then, a writer should be able to vary his length; like a bowler. Whether the modern world has much use for leviathan sentences like those of the seventeenth century, filling a page apiece, [141] may be doubted; on the other hand it is very rarely that I see in essays a sentence of less than six words. Why? Mere habit.

  Variety, indeed, in a wider sense – variety in mood, feeling, and tone – seems both a necessity for the writer and a courtesy to the reader. No one would entertain a guest on the same dishes for days; and no nervous system can go on responding without fatigue to one sort of stimulus, any more than an electric bell can stand being rung for hours. The ‘infinite variety’ of Cleopatra (she spoke a dozen languages and, says Plutarch, ‘Plato admits four sorts of flattery, but she had a thousand’) was probably far more important than the length of her nose. Sincerity, of course, is more important still; one does not trust a human chameleon, like Dryden’s Zimri; but a man of one mood, or one manner, tends to be as boring as a man of one book, or of one idea. Many-sidedness, both in life and literature, seems to me one of the great qualities of Chaucer and, in life, of his disciple Morris; on the other hand Morris’s Earthly Paradise, lovely as it often is, has not the appeal of The Canterbury Tales, just because its graceful melancholy lacks their variety. So with Racine beside Shakespeare. A pearl may be perfect, yet in some lights it grows dull; where a diamond flashes its brilliant answer to the least ray, no matter whence.

  A Note on Epithets

  One frequent transgressor against brevity is the pointless or banal epithet. Voltaire urged that the adjective, though it agrees in gender, number, and case, is the noun’s greatest enemy; Daudet, that the epithet should be to its noun like a mistress, not a long-wedded wife. And Mr. Somerset Maugham has related how he once planned to write a book without a single epithet. This last, indeed, seems too heroically austere. For it would be easy to multiply examples of passages that derive most of their magic from happy epithets.

  οὒρεά τε σκιόεντα θάλασσά τε ἠχῄεσσα.

  Shadowy mountains and far-echoing seas.

  ῥοδοδάκτυλος ’Hώς.

  Rosy-fingered Dawn.

  ῎Iλιος ἠνεμόεσσα.

  Windy Ilios.

  κορυθαίολος ῞Eκτωρ.

  Hector of the glancing helm.

  – Homer

  Luna, dies, et nox, et noctis signa severa.

  Moon, day, and night, and all night’s solemn stars.

  Altitonans Volturnus et Auster fulmine pollens.

  Deep-thundering Volturnus and South Winds

  strong with storm.

  – Lucretius

  Fortuna omnipotens et inelectabile Fatum.

  Almighty fortune and resistless Fate.

  Confusae sonus urbis et ineluctabile murmur.

  The sound of a city troubled, and a m
urmur void

  of joy.

  – Virgil

  Wynsynge she was, as is a joly colt,

  Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.

  – Chaucer

  Amelette ronsardelette,

  Mignonnelette, doucelette,

  Très chère hôtesse de mon corps,

  Tu descends là-bas faiblette,

  Pâle, maigrelette, seulette,

  Dans le froid royaume des morts. [142]

  – Ronsard

  The belching Whale

  And humming Water.

  The gilded Puddle

  Which Beats would cough at.

  That glib and oylie Art.

  To be imprison’d in the viewlesse windes

  And blowne with restlesse violence round about

  The pendant world.

  – Shakespeare

  Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray,

  Had in her sober Liverie all things clad.

  They view’d the vast immeasurable Abyss,

  Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wilde.

  – Milton

  Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,

  With rocks and stones and trees.

  Their incommunicable sleep.

  – Wordsworth

  The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea. [143]

  – Arnold

  Such epithets do not sacrifice brevity. They gain it. For in one or two words they embody a whole vision or a whole meditation. But in many writers (as in the Swinburne passage quoted above) the epithets are excessive in quantity and deficient in quality. And if an epithet does not really strengthen the effect, it is likely to weaken it.

  Endnotes

  71 ‘Only silence is great, and all else is weak.’ [return to text]

  72 ‘He interrupted her at times with the remark – “That is too long”. ’ [return to text]