Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

that live near the sea, will run out upon the cliffs to gaze at it in a storm, though they would not look out of their window to see it in a calm."

"I knew and esteemed a person abroad, who used to say, a man must be a mean wretch that desired to live after threescore years old. But so much, I doubt, is certain, that, in life, as in wine, he that will drink it good, must not draw it to the dregs."

“I have said that the excellency of genius must be native, because it can never grow to any great height if it be only acquired or affected: but it must be ennobled by birth to give it more lustre, esteem, and authority; it must be cultivated by education and instruction, to improve its growth, and direct its end and application; and it must be assisted by fortune, to preserve it to maturity. Now, since so many stars go to the making up of this constellation, 'tis no wonder it has so seldom appeared in the world; nor that when it does, it is received and followed with so much gazing, and so much veneration."

Contrast. We have seen that Temple makes abundant use of antithesis, and that he studies how to give antithesis effective point. In this place we may quote some examples where the antithesis is more paradoxical and epigrammatic. His antitheses

very often have an epigrammatic turn:

"The subsidies from France bore no proportion to the charge of our fleets; and our strength at sea seemed rather lessened than increased by the conjunction of theirs: our seamen fought without heart, and were more afraid of their friends than their enemies; and our discontents were so great at land, that the assembling of our militia to defend our coasts was thought as dangerous as an invasion."

Concerning the Cabal, he drily remarks-"And thus, instead of making so great a king as they pretended by this Dutch War and French Alliance, they had the honour of making only four great subjects."

The Dutch having inundated their country to check the French invasion, he says that "they found no way of saving their country but by losing it."

"Some ages produce many great men and few great occasions; other times, on the contrary, raise great occasions but few or no great men."

"Following this uncertain course, they succeeded, as such counsels must ever do instead of pleasing all, they pleased none; and, aiming to leave no enemies to their settlement of Ireland, they left it no friends.'

Climax.—Our author's grave composed style is as far as possible opposed to abrupt and startling figures of speech, exclamation, apostrophe, and suchlike. It is all the more compatible with the careful building up of climaxes. The reader will notice a steady graduation and culmination in every passage where the subject calls for more than usual stateliness. See under Strength, p. 325.

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity. This quality is incompatible with the dignity and elevation of Temple's style. His diction is very different from the

light familiar diction of Cowley.

In one respect he is more simple than Cowley. He is thoroughly free from the pedantry of superfluous Latin quotations. This does credit to his taste; he was a scholar, and might have quoted. Dryden quotes a little, and probably would have quoted more had he possessed the requisite scholarship. No scholarly writer before Johnson makes so few Latin quotations as Temple.

In the choice and treatment of subjects, he departs from the easy and familiar tracks. An Essay on the "Original and Nature of Government" cannot be made so light and entertaining as an essay on Ambition. On subjects not naturally abstruse-in the 'Memoirs' of his diplomacy and in his Observations on the United Provinces, he writes with two aims more or less antagonistic to popular treatment-a desire to be thorough and a desire to be brief. He is not content with mentioning the chief and obvious circumstances that concur to an event; while his compact pages want the easy diffuseness of picturesque details. In this last respect particularly he differs from the popular historians and essayists of our century: he condenses both narrative and exposition at least three times as much.

Clearness is a distinguishing quality of our author's style. He is both perspicuous and precise. We have spoken of the comparatively good order of his paragraphs. His precision, for one whose works are not upon technical subjects, is no less remarkable. Writing with leisure and composure, he calmly chooses the aptest words and similitudes; sober and sagacious, he seldom leaves his meaning open to doubt.

We have already remarked the propriety of his similitudes. That he squared the circumstances of a comparison deliberately and not by accident, would appear from the following manipulation of a commonplace:

"The comparison between a State and a ship has been so illustrated by poets and orators that 'tis hard to find any point wherein they differ; and yet they seem to do it in this, that, in great storms and rough seas, if all the men and lading roll to one side, the ship will be in danger of oversetting by their weight: but, on the contrary, in the storms of State, if the body of the people, with the bulk of estates, roll on one way, the nation will be safe. For the rest, the similitude holds."

He shows great steadiness in keeping close to facts, rising above verbal quibbling, and calmly setting aside misleading associations. His rejection of the factitious simplicity of the scholastic division

resistance, as little fords; and in short, the very heart of a nation, so valiant of old against Rome, so obstinate against Spain, now subdued, and in a manner abandoning all before their danger appeared: we may justly have our recourse to the secret and fixed periods of all human greatness, for the account of such a revolution; or rather to the unsearchable decrees and irresistible force of divine providence; though it seems not more impious to question it, than to measure it by our scale; or reduce the issues and motions of that eternal will and power to a conformity with what is esteemed just, or wise, or good, by the usual consent or the narrow comprehension of poor mortal men.

Pathos. In his grave treatises he is too composed and stately for the lively expression of affection, sorrow, or a fresh sense of beauty. Yet he never passes by a touching occasion without some sign of feeling. The mood of the writer appears in the temperate and refined mournfulness of the language. Thus

"The noblest spirit of genius in the world, if it falls, though never so bravely, in its first enterprises, cannot deserve enough of mankind to pretend to so great a reward as the esteem of heroic virtue. And yet perhaps many a person has died in the first battle or adventure he achieved, and lies buried in silence and oblivion; who, had he outlived as many dangers as Alexander did, might have shined as bright in honour and fame."

"When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then thre care is over."

Wit.-As under Strength passages may be singled out where the grave vigour and dignity of his style gains the ascendancy, and soars into a loftier strain, so under Wit we may single out passages where his pointed animation gains the ascendancy, and becomes keener and more sparkling.

He is too grave and temperate to turn anybody or anything into violent ridicule. The fine flavour of polished wit is always uppermost. The following is an example:

"A man that tells me my opinions are absurd or ridiculous, impertinent or unreasonable, because they differ from his, seems to intend a quarrel instead of a dispute, and calls me fool or madman with a little more circumstance, though, perhaps, I pass for one as well in my senses as he, as pertinent in talk, and as prudent in life; yet these are the common civilities, in religious argument, of sufficient and conceited men, who talk much of right reason, and mean always their own; and make their private imagination the measure of general truth. But such language determines all between us, and the dispute comes to end in three words at last, which it might as well have ended in at first, That he is in the right, and I am in the wrong."

Examples of his more genial point are to be found chiefly in his letters. The essay on the "Cure of the Gout" is written in a sprightly vein. For example:

"All these things put together, with what a great physician writes of cures by whipping with rods, and another with holly, and by other cruel

ties of cutting and burning, made me certainly conclude, that the gout was a companion that ought to be treated like an enemy, and by no means like a friend, and that grew troublesome chiefly by good usage; and this was confirmed to me by considering that it haunted usually the easy and the rich, the nice and the lazy, who grow to endure much, because they can endure little; that make much of it as soon as it comes, and yet leave not making much of themselves too; that take care to carry it presently to bed, and keep it safe and warm, and indeed lay up the gout for two or three months, while they give out that the gout lays up them. On the other side it hardly approaches the rough and the poor, such as labour for meat, and eat only for hunger; that drink water, either pure or but discoloured with malt; that know no use of wine, but for a cordial, as it is, and perhaps was only intended: or if such men happen by their native constitutions to fall into the gout, either they mind it not at all, having no leisure to be sick; or they use it like a dog, they walk on, or they toil and work as they did before, they keep it wet and cold; or if they are laid up, they are perhaps forced by that to fast more than before, and if it lasts, they grow impatient, and fall to beat it, or whip it, or cut it, or burn it; and all this while, perhaps, never know the very name of gout."

If

Taste. As might be inferred from his character, our author's style is very highly refined. Affectation of terms or phrases, abruptness, extravagance, maudlin sentimentality, coarse invective, are as foreign as may be to his characteristic manner. the standard of a good English style is the style that shall please the majority of educated Englishmen, he errs on the side of too great refinement. In many respects he is a contrast to Macaulay, still more to Carlyle.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Narrative. In a preface to the third part of Temple's 'Memoirs,' Swift claims him as the first Englishman "(at least of any consequence) who ever attempted that manner of writing." Though it is a personal record, the style, as already noticed, is not gossiping and diffuse, but on the contrary compact and brief to the verge of abstruseness. As the principal actor in some of the transactions, he had exceptional advantages for knowing the hidden springs of events.

At one time he intended to write a History of England, having often felt the want of a good general history, and being far from satisfied with the Chroniclers. Obliged by pressure of other employments to abandon this design, he completed an 'Introduction to the History of England,' "from the first originals, as far as he could find any ground of probable story, or of fair conjecture," "through the great and memorable changes of names, people, customs, and laws that passed here, until the end of the first Norman reign." The work is instructive, abounding in sagacious criticism of social and political institutions. It is interesting to contrast his views of history with Macaulay's :—

"I have likewise omitted the accounts and remarks wherein some writers have busied their pens, of strange comets, inclemencies of seasons, raging diseases, or deplorable fires that are said to have happened in this age and kingdom; and are represented by some as judgments of God upon the king's reign, because I rather esteem them accidents of time or chance, such as happen in one part or other of the world, perhaps every age, at some periods of time, or from some influence of stars, or by the conspiring of some natural or casual circumstances, and neither argue the virtues or vices of princes, nor serve for example or instruction to posterity, which are the great ends of history, and ought to be the chief care of all historians."

His 'Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands' is an example of a conspectus, or general view of a state of society in all its parts at a particular time. It is a model of painstaking observation and search, and is full of sagacious remarks. After recounting the rise and progress of the Federation, he delineates their condition towards 1672 under six heads:-their Government, their Situation, their People and Dispositions, their Religion, their Trade, their Forces and Revenues. The performance is very different from the third chapter of Macaulay's History. It is as severely didactic and thorough as Macaulay's is pictorial and superficial.

JOHN DRYDEN, 1631-1700.

From the beginning to the end of his poetical career, Dryden, not content to leave his works to the chances of criticism, loved to defend in prose his principles of composition, and issued hardly anything without an apologetic or explanatory preface or dedication. In this casual form he has left some ingenious special pleading for his own practice, as well as many valuable remarks on his predecessors, and interesting comparisons of the most. eminent names. Besides these stray pieces, he published, in 1668, a formal Essay of Dramatic Poesy '-"a little discourse in dialogue, for the most part borrowed from the observations of others' - which, says Johnson, was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing." It is now interesting chiefly for its defence of rhyming in tragedies-a style abandoned in the author's later works. It also contains some clever argument in favour of the superiority of modern to ancient playwriters.

[ocr errors]

After his conversion to the Catholic Church, he was employed by James II. to defend against Stillingfleet a paper found in the strong-box of the deceased king, purporting to be written by the Duchess of York in explanation of her departure from the Protestant faith. In this controversy there was little that could be called argument on either side-it was very much like other controversies of that time, a pitched battle of abuse; and Dryden,

« ForrigeFortsæt »