FRENCH STYLE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 752, 26 February 1910, Page 9

FRENCH STYLE.

. One 'is 'reminded (observes the "Manchester Guardian") of the; number of prizes offered in. France, for literary work that cbilies, up: to 'certain conditions by the awards that are published at the end of each, year., .There is to be,another. Mme. Zurlinden: has set . apart, "a fund which will yield an.annual 500 francos as a pi-izo in memory: of her brother, M. J. Weiss.. The prize 'is ;to be biennial, and is to be made up of.-the. income''of the two years. 'It is tobe awarded to a book' of criticism,: ot fiction, .of travels, or of .politics, the ono condition being that it is written in "the purest classi-. .cal style." '■ The, adjudicators,'.it-is ob-vio.us.-'if. they have to choose at any timo between'a volume: of criticism and a novel, may find themselves put to it to find .a common denominator,' • but the stipulation ;.for ' the ."purest classical style" is worth, noting. One can sea two reasons for'it. Ons is the inherent excellence "of .that style. One-sees it atits best in the "Provincial Letters" and in certain- , writings, of Eossuet,. and,. however much one may prefer the poetry of the Eoinantic age,.it is arguable that the masterpieces 0f,..th0 period ;o£ Louis Quatorze wil. remain the touchstone of French prose. The other is"that there is some.need in these days of a reversion to. the;.'classic type.. French prose has been suffering as. much as English from tho slipshod uses, of ■■■writers working in haste,'and more even than English from the arts of the phrase-lon'nento'rs. This is part of that "anarchy" in French literature of which M.. Andre Beauuier 'has been writing. He complains that there is sonio danger of the tradition of the French.- language being lost. Men are writing in defiance of syntax, which is merely the logical ordering of ideas; they' are using words ignorantly, and are,'''besides, rushing into rash, neologismsi M. Boaunier is perhaps going to an extreme when lie suggests on the subject of neologisms that French can henceforth live on the vocabulary won by. the romantics, tho philosophers, and the , classics,'"for- a Hying language must cbntinv.e'to grow'; but his" remark is excellent ivhen ho says of -words that "if one does not know'tlu.'ir origin and..all the life they haro. lived during the: centuries: of

literature, ono deprives them ,o£ all the effective 'power-.they.contain."'One thinks of the resolution of'-Rivoiiius in ■"llnrius tho Epicurian." "Others might brutalise or neglect flic' native speech, , that truo 'open field , for charm : and sway over men. He would make of it' a serious study, weighing the ' precise .power of every phrase and word, as though it were precious, metal, ..disentangling the later associations, and going bn<ik.'..to the original and nativo sense of each—restoring to ■ full significance all'its wealth, of latent figuVative expression, reviving or replacing ; its outworn, or tarnished images.". This is.one -of those passages which stir a , , bookish person like the blast of a trumpet. . .•..'■'