Style- the Art of Writing Well

by F L Lucas

  Why not say, ‘I have summarized in this Conclusion, and tabulated in Appendix III, some general principles; which are, however, only provisional’? Why drag in Mr. Midshipman Easy’s poor friend, the master’s mate? Many readers will not have read Marryat’s book – it is not compulsory; many who have, will have forgotten this particular passage; why should their time and patience be wasted? Saintsbury was a genial and generous critic, with a delightful delight in literature, that neither labour nor custom could stale. He was far, I think, from the peacock vanity of De Quincey; but he could not bear to sacrifice, apparently, the most trivial association that flashed across his memory as he wrote.

  In consequence passages in his work like the two last seem to me to illustrate all the three types of discourtesy to readers that we have been discussing – lack of brevity; lack of clarity; and a touch of pedantry and pretentiousness.

  What remedy? The best I know is simple – it is simplicity. Plain prose, I think, should be not too far from talk, and not too near. Colloquialism seems to me odious. ‘Shan’t’, ‘won’t’, ‘can’t’, [154] for example, are hateful in prose, unless it is printed conversation in a play or story; the later seventeenth century tried introducing them into verse – which was worse. [155] But that fashion, fortunately, did not last. On the other hand anyone who talked in the style of the above quotations from De Quincey or Saintsbury would create appalled silence or uproarious mirth; as well sing at a breakfast-party. Entering a salon one evening, the blind Madame du Deffand exclaimed, ‘What is this bad book you are reading?’ It was a certain wit talking – Rivarol. Now Rivarol was, actually, a clever creature; and Madame du Deffand may just have been malicious. But whereas it is no praise to say that a person talks like a book, it seems to me a high compliment to say that a book talks like a living person.

  Indeed, really good styles seem to have a voice of their own. You hear it as soon as you begin to read them. For me, the prose of Yeats is one of the best examples – it has a passionate, dreamy Irish voice. In some ways Yeats seems to me a poseur; it is hard to be patient with his moonings down the road to Endor after a lot of mystical and mythical hocus-pocus; and his attempts in old age to run with a lot of young hares were a contrast to the quiet dignity of Hardy; none the less, another side of him was very genuine – and it speaks in his best prose.

  This, too, is part of the charm of Montaigne as he chats, without ever growing vulgar, in his ‘arrière-boutique’ [156] ; now rambling, now pulling himself up – ‘Je m’en vais bien à gauche de mon thème’ and yet justifying himself – ‘Est-ce pas ainsi que je parle?’ [157] Montaigne was no soldier; but he hates bookish unreality as heartily and healthily as his fellow-Gascon Montluc – ‘Le parler que i’ayme, c’est un parler simple et naïf, tel sur le papier qu’à la bouche; un parler succulent et nerveux, court et serré; non tant delicat et peigné, comme vehement et brusque … non pedantesque, non fratesque, non plaideresque, mais plustost soldatesque.’ [158] This vivid summary of the clarity, brevity, and simplicity I have been urging seems, literally, to speak for itself.

  ‘Proper Words in proper Places,’ said Swift, ‘makes [159] the true Definition of Style.’ That is simple enough – indeed, to me, too simple. It seems to avoid the pretentious only to fall into the bleak. It suggests, in fact, the liveliness of a blue-book. One might as well define good talk as proper remarks in proper places; or the good life as proper conduct on proper occasions. Thus might the primmer and grimmer sort of Victorian governess have admonished her small victims; frowning with ascetic disapproval on grace or gaiety. Swift’s definition not only rules out the more coloured and poetic kinds of prose, like Sir Thomas Browne or Chateaubriand; it makes even plain prose dull – the last thing any art should be. The truth is, I think, that Swift had moods of morbid austerity when he saw the world as a kind of ghastly workhouse with starkly whitewashed walls (on which, when the fit took him, to scribble his own obscenities). Luckily for us, the style of Swift himself was a good deal more than proper – or improper – words in proper places. Into its ruthlessly swept and garnished body there entered the spirits of scorn and hate and pride and indignation, but also of courage and independence, of frustrated affection and even of something like compassion. But one would hardly gather from his definition that literature had anything to do with feelings, of this or any other kind.

  More to our purpose, I think, is Michelet’s comment on Voltaire and Rousseau: ‘Dans Voltaire la forme est l’habit de la pensée – transparent – rien de plus. Avec Rousseau, l’art paraît trop, et l’on voit commencer le règne de la forme, par conséquent sa décadence.’ [160] This admirably illustrates my point about the value of unpretentious simplicity; yet it seems not quite fair either to Voltaire or to Rousseau. Voltaire’s style is not just a kind of transparent cellophane wrapped round his ideas; others, doubtless, have had ideas as sharp and ironic and sardonic as his; but who else could phrase those ideas in words so brisk and crisp, so sparkling and pointed, so mischievously gay? And, much as I prefer Voltaire to Rousseau (whose proper coat of arms might have been a wild man, rampant, embracing a weeping willow surmounted by a March hare), I cannot see that Rousseau is ‘decadent’ simply because he set out to revive a more poetic kind of prose; which was to lead on to the magnificence of Chateaubriand. Let us rather be grateful that both kinds of prose exist – that the Parnassus of prose has two summits; though for most of us, and for most subjects, the less lofty of those summits seems the safer.

  Let us not forget, indeed, that both summits exist. I cannot at all agree with the view of a modern critic: ‘One would like to think that all of us will come to the stage of refusing to write what we would not, indeed could not, say, though that, of course, is not to limit our writing to what we actually do say.’ For this, still more clearly than Swift’s definition, cuts out the loftier kinds of prose. Again, those who import a too colloquial tone into writing, are apt to go further and import slang. The objection to this is not only that slang is often ugly, but also that it is often ephemeral. ‘I should be glad’, says a writer to the Tatler for 28 September 1710, ‘to see you the Instrument of introducing into our Style that Simplicity which is the best and truest Ornament of most things in Life, which the politer Ages always aimed at in their Buildings and Dress (Simplex munditiis), as well as their Productions of Wit. It is manifest that all new affected Modes of Speech, whether borrowed from the Court, the Town, or the Theatre, are the first perishing Parts in any Language; and, as I could prove by many hundred Instances, have been so in ours.’ The same thing happened with the linguistic reform of Russian by Lomonósov (1711–65). He drew both on Church Slavonic and on the vernacular; but, in the words of Prince Mirsky, ‘because of the later evolution of the colloquial language it is often his boldest colloquialisms that seem to us most antiquated’.

  Modern democracy, in many ways admirable, has yet reached a stage where many think Pericles inferior to Cleon, the aristocratic to the vulgar. But I believe that the future will find two qualities fatally lacking in most twentieth-century literature – dignity and grace. They are both, in fact, largely aristocratic qualities. Even our intellectuals, though they may think themselves an intellectual aristocracy, are seldom conspicuous for either. Much of their writing, for me, seems to oscillate between pompousness and vulgarity – except when it combines both. I would suggest, then, not that we should look forward to an extinction of the grander kind of prose, but merely that for ordinary purposes the simpler kind is better. (Though even this kind should lack neither dignity nor grace.)

  There are, of course, two forms of simplicity in literature. There is, first, the natural simplicity of the unsophisticated, as in our best ballads or in Bunyan. Later, as life grows more complex, men are apt to be captivated by artificiality and flamboyance, as in the aureate diction of the declining Middle Ages, or Lyly’s Euphues, or Heroic Drama, or the Aesthetic Movement. But those who are wiser, I think, return at last f
rom such futile complexities of too artificial art to the simpler things that really matter; just as in real life the finest characters may become simpler as their lives draw towards their close – not because they have grown less subtle, but because their values have grown clearer. Such was the ideal of Traherne:

  An easy Stile drawn from a native vein,

  A clearer Stream than that which Poets feign,

  Whose bottom may, how deep so e’re, be seen,

  Is that which I think fit to win Esteem:

  Else we could speak Zamzummim words, and tell

  A Tale in tongues that sound like Babel-hell;

  In Meteors speak, in blazing Prodigies,

  Things that amaze, but will not make us wise.

  The first, naïve kind of simplicity has passed away for the educated of this twentieth century; but the second kind remains.

  Many writers, especially of an academic or aesthetic kind (and never more than today), seem to me to stultify themselves because they are neither clever enough to be brilliant, nor honest enough to be simple. Were they translated into Basic English, it would often become evident to everyone that they had said nothing to the purpose, and had nothing to the purpose to say.

  To illustrate my meaning, I will end with two quotations. The first is from Landor.

  LUCIAN. Timotheus, I love to sit by the side of a clear water, although there is nothing in it but naked stones. Do not take the trouble to muddy the stream of language for my benefit; I am not about to fish in it. …

  I do not blame the prose-writer who opens his bosom occasionally to a breath of poetry; neither, on the contrary, can I praise the gait of that pedestrian who lifts up his legs as high on a bare heath as in a cornfield. Be authority as old and obstinate as it may, never let it persuade you that a man is the stronger for being unable to keep himself on the ground, or the weaker for breathing quietly and softly on ordinary occasions. …

  I also live under Grace, O Timotheus! and I venerate her for the pleasures I have received at her hands. I do not believe she has quite deserted me. If my grey hairs are unattractive to her, and if the trace of her fingers is lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, still I sometimes am told it is discernible even on the latest and coldest of my writings. [161]

  The other passage, full likewise of the beauty of stainless water, is a version of one of the lovelist poems in the Greek Anthology, by Ánytē of Tégea in Arcadia; an embodiment of that natural, effortless gift for style some women have had.

  On a Statue of Hermes by the Wayside

  Beside the grey sea-shingle, here at the cross-roads’ meeting,

  I, Hermes, stand and wait, where the windswept orchard

  grows.

  I give, to wanderers weary, rest from the road, and greeting:

  Cool and unpolluted from my spring the water flows. [162]

  Here are all the qualities I have pleaded for – clarity; brevity; freedom from pretentiousness or pretence.

  Cool and unpolluted from my spring the water flows.

  A Note on Footnotes

  It is a minor question of style, and of consideration for the reader, whether (apart from mere references) a writer should allow himself to use footnotes.

  Against them it can be argued that:

  (1) they are distracting;

  (2) if the author took more trouble, he could weave them into his text.

  But these arguments do not strike me as very convincing.

  (1) In excess, footnotes (like most good things) can become a nuisance; but it seems no less excessive to ban them unconditionally.

  (2) It is true that by giving himself trouble a writer could often work his footnotes into his text; but it might mean a good deal more trouble for the reader too. What was a clear and lucid line of thought, might become a labyrinth.

  (3) Footnotes can increase brevity, as well as clarity.

  (4) Who wants Gibbon shorn of his footnotes?

  Therefore, provided they are used with moderation and discretion, footnotes seem often fully justified.

  But in recent years, especially in America, there has grown up a system of annotation neither intelligent nor considerate. Instead of putting notes at the foot of pages, it jumbles them in a vast dump at the back of the book. No normal reader much enjoys perusing a volume in two places at once; further, though he may find his way, if he has the patience, from the text to note 345, he may have a tedious search to find his way from note 345 to the relevant passage of the text. For this type of author has seldom the sense, or the courtesy, to prefix his notes with the page-numbers concerned. Consequently it may be suspected that five readers out of six either skip the notes altogether or skim through them in a lump, if they are interesting enough, without looking back at the text.

  The case is different with commentaries on great literature, like Homer or Sophocles or Shakespeare. Fine writing deserves fine printing; a page of poetry is not enhanced by a rubble of scholia at the bottom; therefore such commentaries appear better at the end. But footnotes are not commentaries; and most books are not great art. Accordingly there seems much to be said for a return to the older system of putting footnotes at the foot of pages, not in a sort of boothole at the back.

  Endnotes

  144 But would really ‘better’ minds, even if ‘less educated’, be so very blundering? [return to text]

  145 A strange quality, some may think, to include here; yet there may be a good deal in it. [return to text]

  146 ‘Everyone nowadays has brilliance, but if there is not plenty of it in a person’s ideas, distrust mere phrases. These brilliant wits, unless they possess vividness, novelty, piquancy, originality, remain in my opinion only fools. Those who do possess this vividness, novelty, and piquancy may still lack perfect charm: but if to these qualities a person adds also imagination; attractive minor traits; perhaps even some pleasing inconsistencies; certain flashes of unexpectedness; subtlety; eleganimmutable moralityce; precision; a fund of engaging information; a type of reasonableness that is not wearisome; a complete freedom from vulgarity; a manner that is either simple or distinguished; a range of happy turns of speech; gaiety, tact, grace, an easy unconstraint, and an individual style in speech or writing – then you may say that such a man is really and unquestionably a brilliant intelligence, and possesses charm.’ (Here, as elsewhere, a less literal translation might do more justice to the original; but might be less helpful to the reader.) [return to text]

  147 ‘One should leave these bad people in uncertainty.’ [return to text]

  148 Already the irony peeps through. Who but a critic could suppose that the fate of nations hung upon theories of criticism? [return to text]

  149 Boileau. [return to text]

  150 ‘M. Ferdinand Brunetière, for whom I have a great fondness, subjects me to serious attack. He reproaches me with ignoring the very laws of criticism; with having no criterion for judging things intellectual; with drifting, at the mercy of my instincts among contradictions; with never getting away from myself, and being shut up in my own subjectivity as in some murky dungeon. Far from complaining of his onslaught, I rejoice in a contention so honourable, where every detail is so flattering for me – the distinction of my opponent; the vigour of a condemnation that yet conceals so much indulgence; and the importance of the issues at stake – for, according to M. Brunetière, there is involved nothing less than the intellectual future of France. …

  ‘It is, then, fairer that I should defend myself alone. This I will try to do; but not without first paying tribute to the valour of my adversary. M. Brunetière is a fighting critic, of uncommon intrepidity. He belongs, in controversy, to the school of Napoleon and those great captains who know that a victorious defence is possible only by taking the offensive, and that to let oneself be attacked is to be already half beaten. And so he has come to assail me in my little woodland, beside my limpid stream. He is a fierce opponent. He goes at it tooth and nail, to say nothing of his feints and stratagems. I mean that,
in controversy, he has a variety of tactics; and, when deduction fails him, does not despise the purely intuitive. I was not troubling his waters. But he is of a disputatious humour; even a little quarrelsome. A common fault among the brave. And I like to see him so. Did not the good Nicholas, our common master, say? –

  We should care less for Achilles, if less quick and choleric.

  ‘I suffer from many disadvantages if I really must do battle with M. Brunetière. No need for me to point out inferiorities of mine that are only too certain and obvious. Enough if, among them, I indicate one of special prominence – that is, that while he finds my criticism deplorable, I find his excellent. This in itself throws me on to the defensive – which, as we just remarked, all tacticians disapprove. I have the greatest respect for the robust constructions produced by M. Brunetière. I admire the solidity of their materials, the spaciousness of their planning. Recently I have been reading the courses given by this master-lecturer at the École normale on “The Evolution of criticism from the Renaissance to modern times”; and I have no hesitation in saying emphatically that his ideas are there marshalled with careful system, and set forth in an order that is felicitous, imposing, and new. Their march, ponderous but sure, recalls that famous manoeuvre of the Roman legionaries when, in serried ranks, under cover of their shields, they advanced to attack a town. This formation was called “the Tortoise”; and formidable it was. There is, perhaps, a certain admixture of surprise in my admiration when I see the direction taken by this army of ideas. M. Ferdinand Brunetière proposes to apply to literary criticism the theories of Evolution. Now, if this seems an enterprise both interesting and laudable itself, the public still remembers the energy recently displayed by the critic of the Revue des Deux Mondes’ (Brunetière himself) ‘in subordinating science to morality, and impugning the authority of any doctrine based on natural science. … He rejected the ideas of Darwin in the name of immutable morality. “These ideas”, he said explicitly, “must be false, for they are dangerous.” And now he bases his new criticism on the Theory of Evolution. … I am not saying for a moment that M. Brunetière is denying, or contradicting, himself. I merely note a natural disposition, a trait of character in him – a tendency, along with his gift for clear reasoning, to plunge into the unexpected and the unforeseen. When he was once called a lover of paradox, this seemed (so firmly established was his reputation for logical thinking) a mere piece of irony. But on reflection it has appeared that he really is, in his way, rather paradoxical; and at times he likes vigorously to maintain opinions that are extraordinary and, indeed, stupefying.