SPECIAL ARTICLE.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18668, 17 April 1926, Page 13

SPECIAL ARTICLE.

■ESGOm PROSE.

Ufa OFFICIAL PATTERN BOOK." *' ■ i claim here, and with all I • Utak, Us Purpose »ho starts i ' judging it by the amount of space, . "JS«»6«r o/ extracts, assigned ' : ' be . mistaken in deeming me 1 '. ignorant of an author not in- '■■ ' eluded, or in his opinion, msvffii- gently represented as against one ~\~ 0 j acknowledged importance . . . , the anthologist, as 1 understand " hit trade, must have a "notion ■" '.of his own, a "pattern in the ■ •carpet," though, h* cannot easily f Siflni his pattrrn.-Sir Arthur v. -QUitter-Couch. r Vgj r Arthur Quiller -Cour.h 's anthology, V dMplte to defects, is sure to remain * fir many years the official pattern book ,' „f-onr native prose. There it stands, '*' of a thousand pages; and 1 thVngh in onr most leaden doubts we ' ! -'dd not wish the thing undone, yet we do I fwlthat it is legitimate to hedge that , authoritative security -with definitions jid-qtialincations. There are two kinds f 'f ujthology: one merely gathers into ' ti'boiicli the flowers that attract us on jrtr literary way; the method, here is private and haphazard. It is not a method to which, in so solemn a contra' ai an "Oxford Book," an anthologist would lightly resort; and quite--elM'ty ifc is not the metnod to .wiidv'Si* Arthur has resorted. Apart 'from, this wayward florilegium, there • ii Bo'alternative but a purposive selec- *> tk&i and when your field is the whole English prose (rather than -"iia Individual cats and dogs, the gar*<len» and flowers, or othor features ot ' that expanse), then that purpose must 7-MMltt i tse " into cri ticism. Your 'anthology must be an anthology of that In all good faith you consider to "it good prose. And "what, you consider,"* implies not what merely takes jour fancy but whatever has i goodness you art prepared . tit defend by an appeal to eHtfeal principles. Sir Arthur frankly abandons this intention, "I have very jedulously included all sorts of prose, choosing often a passage quite pedestrian." On what principle? Why, like tie geologist, unfold every stratum when your business, if you once admit that prose is an art, is to follow the '▼( fur of ore? The present anthologist is l ready with an answer: for he has jyide it as clear' as possible, in his that -it is. precisely, in follow-' Tig a vein that he has struck so many livela. /Sir Arthur confesses that his /rJupdaelras been to make the'anthology i "'a* "representatively English" as possible. , ; \^'"Prose" or "English"? the'<flrat thing to be noted in this apology' is sat in shiftinp; the empha sis from the - word "prose" to the , epithet "English" Sir Arthur m the, critical position. We "shall presently examine' hi*-interpretation of the quality: of;Bi|{MneßSj (put. in th,e, first place, wolfiwwalte dear' the possibility of . _tbt iirerer task., declined by Srr Art Km.', The whole difficulty hinges on ttfr,j;{eiiJratioTi given : to prose. Sir with, qne.thafc seems ar- ' hrnitj and inadequate. It ia a defciwfon'mirit of a distinction made be- «*««» prose and-verse by; Arthur Clut\,to,n>Bfl>ek, who argued that while • the ' CTS?* 1 , virtue of verse is. Love, the MTouiaV virtue of prose is Justice. Sir Arthur wefers to regard Persuasion latter than Justice as the first virtue i'- of prose, whether in narrative or \ m argument:— V JWeVi art in telling o{ Crusoe's visits to jjßi **& '» 'll bent, on persuading you , t|SS'*'. n,,, y * happened and just so; as Sjw»r « pleading f or conciliation with the JSJjncan v colonists, is bent on marshalling ?s£s"" J** 011 al ß ulaent w hy conciliation is fv xitTMdient besides being, just. In argument, Mmre, the appeal liea always towards «ma»d seat of absolute justice to which '«tttfj.¥ i l !* **" Court* every ■ plea 'is ad- ■>' sKST?' J* 1 ""' 0 " >«• after all, as "Matthew '*"' - the on, y trWB intellectual, pro- - to ' substituting Persuasion for "'wS 1 ' and in developing his idea, he i'jfSS-i?*}*? de P ar * ed fr <>m Clutton4||ST.y Paginal intention, Ifliich, ./'SK? B ?'?* eannot •*> accepted.as ideal, '~*s*L 8 i Buy rate more than a definiti6n • • #K^ tl< "?.- Hwe refer ;to the context Clutton-Brock expanding his of Justice : her * l do not mean ' JU'Kce only i»P»«:cular people,,or ideas, but a habit of in an the prqoeetea of thought, a whMt vllli '* d |nd & {otm mduW * d b J nJ:, t , I l Me litt,e words "form" and Wrle", that Sir Arthur has relinqtohed, arid by .doing so has relinqjiMed all pretensions to a definition »«£?"' ? nd there hy any criterion that -wow a serious anthologist.

\ l f Prose Is An Art. «J»~ . trnth that i 1; Beems necessary to tJEEL" q^lte Bim P , 3 r th at.prose is an Nff£L Pa T 1CUl " form o£ the "t of wnting-. It may be that there is only - f &Hl rB the art of writing,>.nd 'f|BU*i , J' ht^. wMcb make *** »tyle J© J«to«»»«Mteljr in prose and -to §&%^ and is the critlcal i* B & M» »m u 7 ec< *t forms of writ%|S!. " WCt, ° DS between P™« and ''U^n ° f wn «ther in proße *P«**." in" de 6our- \ . . and motive memory:-. ftiltr/S >W*>»nt „„ TpSl. L»i?, po r o,r ' en \f»™, Vtf&? mtMt : uim * ' *£££ iK y that in the '«Mtive act *>£ * her.£?%*»*• The * And thr£hf ■*'; is,ble . and real; f l * image e\oke« «.« ~ * ■"*»«». ' <«&>, if?tp the vS... °' dS; 0r "» if it »**% a"stale J£ w S",. b " rt » »*W,

in freshly minted coin, is possible only to a'few autocrats. But these- are the rulers of literature, the creators of style; and they only should find a place in" an anthology of the best prose. There 'are two kinds of prose; they are;, we think, the only two possible Kinds of prose, and one is good prose, the other bad prose. We do not pretend that the solidity of what we are calling good prose is always possible to sustain, or, indeed, necessary to sustain. We must admit a prose of expediency; counters are legitimate as tokens of exchange when what we -want is not truth, or beauty, but the vagrue generalisations that suffice us for the ordinary business of life. But the prose of expediency is not the prose of art; and even exact utilitarian or scientific, prose is only good prose to the degree in which, it is salted with vital imagery and an emotional content. The Unit of Good Prose. The unit of good prose is either the image or the idiom. Good prose is a mosaic of these units arranged with some regard for rhythm, which is a physical quality, ensuring ease. The image is the closest verbal counterpart of the thing seen; a clean word, fitting closely like a glove, a word with no ragged edges of vagueness or indecision. Such words are placed in some illuminating relationship one with another; they may be in simple metaphorical juxtaposition, as in "razorshells," or in more deliberate, analogical forms, as in "crucified shirts." In both these examples, however, there is an effect of compression which perhaps complicates the issue. Good prose in a more normal form is more direct, less metaphorical, and depends not so much on new analogies as on stark visualisation. The image is evoked by the bare relation. And it is this kind of prose that is most permanent in its appeal, since it involves almost no element of fancy and therefore no element of fashion. The following description of the murder of Thomas a Beckett from Caxton's edition of the "Golden Legend" does not contain a single metaphor:— Then one of the knights smote him as he kneeled before ihe altar on the head. And one Sir Edward Grim, that w»a his croeaier, put forth hie arm with the cross to bear off the stroke, and the stroke smota the cross asunder' and hi» arm almost off, wherefore he fled for fear, and so did monks, that were that time at compline. And then smote each at him, that they smote off a great piece of the akull of ■ his head, that his brain fell on the pavement. And to they slew snd martyred him, and were so cruel that one of them brake the point of his sword against the pavement. And thus this holy and blessed Archbishop S. Thomas suffered death in hia own church for the right of all holy church. And when he was dead they atirred his brain, and after went into his chamber and took away his goods, and his horse out of his stable, and took away his bulls and his writings, and delivered them to Sir Hobert Broke to bear into France to *he king. And a« they searched his chamber they found in his cheet two shirts of hair made full of great knots, and then they said: Certainly he was a good man; and, coming down into the churchyard they began to dread and fear that the ground would not have borne them, and were marvellously aghast, but they supposed that the earth would have swallowed them all quick. And then they knew that they had done amiss. And anon it was known all about, how that he was martyred, and anon after thev took his holy body, and unclothed him, and foiind bishop's clothing above, and the nabit of a monk under. And next his flesh, he wore hard hair, full •of knots, which was his shirt. . And his breeeh wa* of the same, and'the knots sticked fast within the skin, and, all his body, full of worms) he svffered, great >»in. It may possibly be objected that such pTO.se is,too violent; that it gets its effect by the uninspired r.eeord of crude horror. It is more likely 1 that our sense of horror, if it actually exists, is the qualm of a too acute sensibility, Thia was certainly, not a violent prose for the fifteenth century.' And apart from the question of a different' sensibility, is - there ■ really- any difference l "oil technique, -of art, in 'so '■typically taoderir a passage as this!:—. Everything' had come to a 'standstill. : The •throb of the'motor engines eounded like a pulse irregularly drumming' through an entire body. The. sun became extraordinarily hot because the motorcar had stopped outaide .Mulberry's shop, window; old ladies on the tops of-omnibuses' spread thejr black parasols; here a green, here a,red parasol opened with a .ittle pop, Mrs Dalloway, coming to the window with her, aims full .of sweet peas, looked put. .with her little pink f»ce pursed, in epquiry. Everyone looked at the motor-car,' Septimus looked. Boys on bicycles .prang off. Traffio accumulated. And there the motor-car stood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tre>, Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes,'as if'some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him.'. IJhe world wavered, and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It ia-I who am- blocking tha way, he thought. Was he not being and pointed at; was be not, weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for a purpose? But' for what purpose? Images are. the rudiments of a literary art, but; as these passages show, there is another element. An aggregation of fresh images' would not of itself constitute' a'prose style; it would be a rocky, glittering graceless and uneven for the mind's absorption. This other quality • which is added' to the moments of imagery has for its unit the idiom. An idiom is literally a way of expression peculiar to a' person or a ■ language; : But we sometimes talk of the genius of a language, so possibly the word "idiom might be reserved for the more- restricted aspect of the question. An idiom then becomes the unit of style; it is the outcome of those hereditary and environmental influences which determine in any man his individual predilections and fancies. It is an index to his personality. As the events were received into each individual mould of sensibility, so the cast of those events which we evoke in " writing emerges with all the sutures of this mould. Idiom is the sum of those influences which determine, not only our choice of words, but also their arrangement in a personally appealing rhythm. It is the expression in-words of what Remv de Gourmont called the emotive memory; it is the element which, joined to .a visual memory, determines style. • Prose Has a Pace. With the definition of image and idiom we have not quite completed the analysis of good prose: there is another element which we must call "ordanauce." Idiom has given us a unity, but it is the unity of a material. To complete the process of perfect writing there must also • be structure. Structure, .it would seem, is the product of logical thought, whether exercised in argument or in narrative. It implies progression; and good prose is never for long or consistently good without this element of progress. Good prose must have, a pace: it must step like a well-bred horse: each word must strike with clean precision and must advance with'a continuous rhythm. It is this principle that brings in doubt the stray purple passage, the disjointed prose poem, and the excerpt generally. These can have all. the qualities of good imagery and good idiom, but without ord.onnance they are ruins rather than buildings, and. a prose anthology can only be justified with this limitation in mind. Image, idiom, ordonnanee —is that all! Not quite. "Images, however faithfully, copied from Nature, and' as ac-curately-represented in words, do not of- themselves -characterise the poet; They become .proofs of original genius only so far as they are modified by a predominant passion, or. by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion." These words of Coleridge's striXe to a deeper reality than any we have .so far ' considered; and to them

we might add these equally significant words of Henry James'siThere is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very near together; that is in the light of the very obvious truth that the. deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. • ,In great prose, as in great poetry, a fine sensibility is not enough. The quality of a mind, its predominating passion, is often difficult enough to define. Who would venture confidently to define Swift's, or Newman's, or Emily Bronte's? Yet these are among the greatest masters of our prose, and among those most evidently dominated by a great passion. . But among their more discernible qualities—it is.-also a passion—is. one wo describe as English: "A sense of wonderful history written silently in books and buildings, all persuading that we are heirs of more spiritual wealth than, may be, we have surmised or hitherto begun to divine." So this "subdued and hallowed emotion"' is designated by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; and' in. default of a critical intention, this is -the sanction he has sought for his labours as an anthologist. It would have been a graceful amend, at the conclusion of this review, to have acknowledged his success in this venture; but we are too conscious of a quality in the true tradition of English life and literature to be sure' of its presence in this anthology. There is a spirit that runs through all our great writers, from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Jonson to Swift, from Sterne to . . . . we do not know whether it will yet revive. But it is a spirit antithetical to the spirit so fully represented by Sir Arthur QuillerCouch. which is the spirit of Puritanism and Quietism, of subjective joys and passive aspirations. There is, over against this spirit, sometimes woven in with it, but essentially a part of our national heritage, the spirit of open candour and of active' enjoyment, the life of deeds and of zest in the .sensuous quality of our flesh. Xot the dreamy sensuousness of the South, but the gross gaillarriise of the North It might be objected that in its gross state this is not fit matter for literature, though Sir John Falstaff and the Wife of Bath are there to disprove it. But this spirit can be elevated into wit and gaiety; and though we must admit that Sir Arthur has given us a fair specimen'of Sterne, we are left aghast at the total omission of Congreve—rin whom not onlv does this spirit attain ite highest sublimation but in whom the English tongue attains its greatest levity of diction and fine force of aptitude: Other writers, Dryden and Berkeley, Swift and Landor, support the tradition -of our national prose; only Congrevei and Sterne can be said to adorn "it.