To return to style,and its appropriateness:all depends on the work in hand,and the audience addressed.Thus,in his valuable Essay on Style,Mr.Pater says,with perfect truth:
{3}"The otiose,the facile,surplusage:why are these abhorrent to the true literary artist,except because,in literary as in all other arts,structure is all important,felt or painfully missed,everywhere?--that architectural conception of work,which foresees the end in the beginning,and never loses sight of it,and in every part is conscious of all the rest,till the last sentence does but,with undiminished vigour,unfold and justify the first--a condition of literary art,which,in contradistinction to another quality of the artist himself,to be spoken of later,I shall call the necessity of MIND in style."These are words which the writer should have always present to his memory,if he has something serious that he wants to say,or if he wishes to express himself in the classic and perfect manner.But if it is his fate merely to be obliged to say something,in the course of his profession,or if he is bid to discourse for the pleasure of readers in the Underground Railway,I fear he will often have to forget Mr.Pater.It may not be literature,the writing of causeries,of Roundabout Papers,of rambling articles "on a broomstick,"and yet again,it MAY be literature!"Parallel,allusion,the allusive way generally,the flowers in the garden"--Mr.
Pater charges heavily against these.The true artist "knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to which any DIVERSION,literally,is welcome,any vagrant intruder,because one can go wandering away with it from the immediate subject .In truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage,from the last finish of the gem engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust,back to the earliest divination of the finished work to be lying somewhere,according to Michel Angelo's fancy,in the rough-hewn block of stone."Excellent,but does this apply to every kind of literary art?What would become of Montaigne if you blew away his allusions,and drove him out of "the allusive way,"where he gathers and binds so many flowers from all the gardens and all the rose-hung lanes of literature?Montaigne sets forth to write an Essay on Coaches.He begins with a few remarks on seasickness in the common pig;some notes on the Pont Neuf at Paris follow,and a theory of why tyrants are detested by men whom they have obliged;a glance at Coaches is then given,next a study of Montezuma's gardens,presently a brief account of the Spanish cruelties in Mexico and Peru,last--retombons a nos coches--he tells a tale of the Inca,and the devotion of his Guard:Another for Hector!
The allusive style has its proper place,like another,if it is used by the right man,and the concentrated and structural style has also its higher province.It would not do to employ either style in the wrong place.In a rambling discursive essay,for example,a mere straying after the bird in the branches,or the thorn in the way,he might not take the safest road who imitated Mr.Pater's style in what follows:
"In this way,according to the well-known saying,'The style is the man,'complex or simple,in his individuality,his plenary sense of what he really has to say,his sense of the world:all cautions regarding style arising out of so many natural scruples as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things,the purity of this medium,its laws or tricks of refraction:nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that."Clearly the author who has to write so that the man may read who runs will fail if he wrests this manner from its proper place,and uses it for casual articles:he will fail to hold the vagrom attention!
Thus a great deal may be done by studying inappropriateness of style,by adopting a style alien to our matter and to our audience.If we "haver"discursively about serious,and difficult,and intricate topics,we fail;and we fail if we write on happy,pleasant,and popular topics in an abstruse and intent,and analytic style.We fail,too,if in style we go outside our natural selves."The style is the man,"and the man will be nothing,and nobody,if he tries for an incongruous manner,not naturally his own,for example if Miss Yonge were suddenly to emulate the manner of Lever,or if Mr.John Morley were to strive to shine in the fashion of Uncle Remus,or if Mr.Rider Haggard were to be allured into imitation by the example,so admirable in itself,of the Master of Balliol.It is ourselves we must try to improve,our attentiveness,our interest in life,our seriousness of purpose,and then the style will improve with the self.Or perhaps,to be perfectly frank,we shall thus convert ourselves into prigs,throw ourselves out of our stride,lapse into self-consciousness,lose all that is natural,naif,and instinctive within us.Verily there are many dangers,and the paths to failure are infinite.
So much for style,of which it may generally be said that you cannot be too obscure,unnatural,involved,vulgar,slipshod,and metaphorical.See to it that your metaphors are mixed,though,perhaps,this attention is hardly needed.The free use of parentheses,in which a reader gets lost,and of unintelligible allusions,and of references to unread authors--the Kalevala and Lycophron,and the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,is invaluable to this end.So much for manner,and now for matter.
