ENGLISH PROSE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 175, 18 April 1908, Page 12

ENGLISH PROSE.

English prose of tho nineteenth century is not usually, remarkable for its prosaic: excellence. Indeed, the very words prosaic excellence have a contemptuous sound for our ears, as if they referred to something that was good only by reason of its defects. Poetry is so pre-eminont in our literature, and always ha 3 been except -in the eighteenth; contury, that oven our best writers of prose are apt to regard it as poetry's poor relation and as most-admirable when it is most like pootry. Except in the, eighteenth century we havo not excelled iri prose like the French; not because wo have been inferior to them in eloquence or originality; orj seriouness," but because wo have'too 1 seldom written prose according to its own: laws. The laws of prose differ from the laws of poetry,, because reason is the masted proso and; emotion of! poetry. Reason has its part in pootry, but it: is subsidiary. When'a. poet'argues; it is because ho wishes to express sonie 'emotion indirectly by means of /argument; when argument is tho main purpose of-, verse, it ought, to, to prose. So , tho oniotions have,thoir part in .ailbeautiful iprose,; but it v is, subsidiary. A prose writer may argue 'with passion, but ho should ini dulgo-it only so far a's it will'give force to his argument ; when he tells a story he may kindle with emotion as he tells/it, but still 'his main purpose should be to tell the story, not. to express the emotions that are kindled by it., We cannot; draw a 'sharp line totween proso, and poetry; especially in narrative. But even poetry is far more emotional'thah trite prose; and we all feel ihat-. a ..story told'in verse without emotion ought to b'e prose, whilo at the'same time we feel that a story top emotionally ;told in prose is overburdened with ornament. ' That which is the structure -of poetry is only the ornament of prose, and the writer who has a prose conscience will never forget this nor will he for a single sentence "allow his structure to be.lost in, ornament...

Except in. the eighteenth rentury the proso conscience hfis been wanting or uncertain in many of our greatest writers, nor has it been encouraged, as in France, by the public taste, ;which is inpatient of unemotional poetry but not of irrational prose. Nowadays we seem to be less aware than ever that prosb j lias its own beauties';different from .those of .poetry,;,an'd.: v that ;„they.,..are only through obadience '.to'. its laws; It may seem mere pedantry, to ;'clemand that obedience, if other and more exciting beauties can be got without it ; but experience shows that prose which is too poetic wears almost as badly as Tho omainents splehdid' while they, are new > look irierc -excrescences when thoy grow oltj. When the prose of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seems childish and irrelevant .tp.lis l.ti.is almost always because of-its ornaments, sometimes pootical, sometimes' of mere ingenuity ; and- of our older prose writoro those are ' the most -rend who, like Izaak Walton,^wore most .obedient to the laws of . ; ■ l lt ».>>ofc indoloiico or the love of novelty or the want of historic imagina-' tior. that;hinders lis from reading tho*others! There, is . often: something, irrational in the very process of their thought which prevents us. from talcing it quite seriously. Even Milton, who sneaks like a God in vqrse, can talk ■.like a child in,'prose;'-distractiuKhimEGlf. from his main theme with toys of imagery, plavr words when he should bo labouring mth arguments. The aim of. a controversialist, should- be to . convince his; readers oven against their will. Ho must not assume that they are with him and that he can move' them,; like a poet, with, mere appeals to emotions that are the same as his'own. If he does this, he will only exasperate those who disagree "with him'at the start into a stronger disagreement at the finish; and to.an indifferent posterity ho will seem a mere partisan absorbed , m matters that have lost their importance. But the: controversialist' who appeals to reason makes an everlasting appeal. His cause may bo lost or forgotten, but "his process will still delight the minds of men. How much more eloquent and splendid is tho prose of Milton than the proso of Swift; but Milton l delights us only with thoscr passages nv which, liko the poet, ho appeals to universal.. emotions. Swift delights us with the very process of his reasoning; ho moves us because ho convinces us, with "naked : statement and argument. ; His passion is always subjected :to his .intellect before it is allowed v to speak, and it always speaks in terms, dictated, by his "intellect. > ■ -It is strange that'-so'.few- of our great modern -prose writers should have learit the laws of'prose from' Swift and tho masters of the, eighteenth century. '• Those laws were still observed by Cobbett, by Hazlitt with all his wilfulness, and ■ by. Lamb vwith all his whims.. They; wero constantly disobeyed by Do Quincey and Ruskin, and often by Car-lyley-'rDe-.Qnmcsey already is suffering for hiß disobedience, and who can tell how much the other two, for all their genius, will suffer? Even now the authority of Ruskin is undermined by his perversity. The eloquent reasoning of one. half- of "Unto, this Last," and of the great chapter on the nature of Gothic in the Stones of Venice,, is forgotten before we have dono with the irrational eloquence of the rest; and if wo, who are almost his contemporaries, are- impatient of it, what patience can be expected of a posterity troubledwith different problems and accustomed to: different methods of' address P. The poet appeals to emotions that aro constant in the mind of man. Even when he tells a story ■ about particular people'his, main purpose is to appeal to those emotions; and his process eliminates all facts which do not assist in that appeal. It is the habit of Ruskin, as of Milton in his prose works, to appeal to tho emotions as if he were a poet and as if such an appeal were his main purpose. Mrs. Binmgi.ves.us.in.her.book his eloquent apology for Turner, in which, after telling us that Turner had no one to teach him in his youth, and no one to love him in his old age, he proceeds thus:— .

'.'Naturally irritablo,; though kind—natu- ■ rally suspicious, though generous—the gold gradually became flim, and the most fine gold changed, or if not changed, overcast and clouded. The deop heart was still beating, but it' was beneath a dark and melancholy mail, between whose joints, however,' sometimes the slightest arrows found entrance ; and power of giving pain." . . .. The case of Carlyle differs from the case of Ruskin because he was on his guard against diffuse eloquence and appeals to sentiment. But he, too, was hot content to write moro prose, although contemptuous of poetry. With all his professed worship of facts ho was impatient'of'stating them. H'e would not "trust to the true prose writer's art of lodcal arrangement or leave he facts, oven when they' were most eloquent, to 6peak for themselves. He was always aiming at the concentration of poetry and in the process losing'the continuity of prose. In'his histories, like Mr. George Meredith in his novels, ho tries like a poet to force his narrative into lyrical moments; and, not being a poet, at such momonts ho'is apt to become inarticulate. Take, for instance,' his treatment of the trial of Marie Antoinette. It is a case for simple narrative, if ever there too one. But Oarlylo will not trust to the faots

to move tba emotions of his renders. Ho must express those emotions himself, as if ho were a poet instead of an historian and lyrical rather than an epic poet. After one short paragraph, half statement, half rhetoric, ho proceeds thus:— There are few printed things ono meots with of such tragic, almost ghastly,. significance as those bald pages of tho "Bulletin dti Tribunal Kevolutionnairo," which boar tifclo, "Trial of the Widow Capet." Dim, dim, as if in disastrous eclipse: like the pale kingdoms of Dis! Plutonic Judge; Plutonic Tinville; encircled, nine times, with: Styx and Lethe, with Firc-Phlogethon and Cocytuo named of Lamentation. This passage lacks both the logic of proso and the beauty of pootry; and a man so gifeat asCarlylc could not have writton it if ho had not had a wrong theory of prose, if ho had not been discontented with its proper appeal and wished to strain it beyond its proper functions. Newman's eloquence is kindled by, tho natural process of his thought. Ho begins with quiet statements if which ho seemß to bo thinking rather than speaking; or, if spoaking, .talking to himself. The sentences move slowly with no emphasis and little rhythm. From the nature of tho subject we oxpact appeals to the emotions, but the writer, though he quotes beautiful texts, does eo for tho. sake of hjs argument rather than to move us, and that argument is never interrupted either by his quotations or by the few images which he employs. But gradually and, as it -seems, inevitably his mind is uplifted and quickened by its progress; and as his thoughts work upon him, so they work upon his readers, and they are wrought into sympathy as he reasons himself into eloquence. Quotations will not show the nature of that eloquence, for its effect is cumulative, and all the sentences are linked together by the ■ "other harmony" of prose, the harmony of reason." That persists from the beginning to thi end, and so controls the language that it could never be mistaken for the language of poetry. The rhythm, the structure of tho sentences, many of the very words are peculiar to < phise; and yet how much more moving is this proso, content with its own proper methods and obedient'to its own laws, .than any prose-which attempts to move us -with the methods of pootry. Newman had the perfect proso temper, and it is expressed in the perfection of his method. . . There are many writers who labour after truth, but few who when they think they have fqund it are content, to present it I without ornnmont and without crying up their own achievement. - ' Only tho great prose writer does this, the man who can lose himself in his proso as the great poet loses himself in -his poetry. Wo havo many poets. who lose themselves in,.their poetry, but fewer prose- writers who lose themselves in their prose; and our contemporary proso writers, though' they cannot be overawed by the poetry of the present, do Hot seen anxious to learn tho true art or prose. The aim: of much elaborate contemporary prose is not somuch to be poetical as to bo pictorial, and it tries to be ■ pictorial particularly in its epithets. Perhaps it was Stovenson who first made popular the unexpected epithet; which seems to bo there for its own sake and calls awr.y the reader's attention from the drift s of the whole .'sentence to its own individual meaning. But in his later writings, he was sparing of it, and if he could havo known how it would bo abused ho would surely never have used it at all. The purpose of the unexpected epithet, when it is not a mere trick, is usually pictorial;-and though it cannot be laid down that proso should never try to make pictures for, us, yet it is certain .that violently pictorial epithets are out of placo iu all proso. that is hot purely ■ descriptive, while even in' descriptive prose they impress details rather than the general effect upon our minds;. In.other kinds of prose', they arrest that movement, of'tho reader's thought which should accompany the succession of words; and.when theso arrest's are frequent the reader is likely,,to,cease from,thinking altogether, and, if he reads on, to read for the sako of tho epithets and the violent, but disconnected, impressions which they convey.'to his mind.' In that case he would bo better employed looking at a cinematograph. Now much hasty writing, with all the faults into which hasty writers must fall, there isi more need than ever that we should understand the laws of prose; and cultivate a conscience .that will delight in obeying, thoni.