Talks on Writing English

I noticed that the hat was of soft felt, and one might easily guess that it had been bought at a bargain sale. It lent a comfortable sense of satisfaction to its owner, and suggested to him the idea of going to church.

In the former, the writer’s point of view is that of one looking out of a window at a crowd, and it is proper that he should say “turns, departs;” but after the crowd has departed he cannot see whether it disintegrates or not. If he should say, “Turns, disintegrates, departs,” one could find no fault. In the second example, the point of view is at first that of an observer who sees the hat on the head of a stranger; then, without warning, it is shifted to the mind of any observer, – “one,” – and then, in a twinkling, to the thought of the wearer himself, which has been by the hat turned to the idea of going to church.

We shall have to do later with the point of view in its application to the various sorts of composition. Here it is enough to add the warning to inexperienced writers: Do not write to discover what you think, or how you feel about a subject. These questions are to be settled before writing is begun. In half the themes which I read, it is apparent that the writer has been going ahead in a sort of forlorn hope of ultimately learning his own opinions. To be in doubt when one begins, either of where one is bound or of how the attempt to get there is to be made, is as fatal in writing as in horse-racing. There is a good deal of what might be called the June-bug style of composition. Just as a beetle bangs his clumsy thick head against a window or a netting in hope that he may chance to strike a place where he can get through to the lamp within, so the June-bug writer goes banging absurdly down his page, bumping against any obstacle, trusting to fate and the chapter of accidents to show somewhere and somehow a way through. The man who has learned to write does not begin until he has an idea what his way through is to be. This being clear in his mind, he goes consistently toward it, and his consistency is what is called keeping the point of view.

The point of view being selected, it is often necessary to give the reader a clue to it. Sometimes it is needful to use no inconsiderable amount of skill to bring him to accept it. The well-trained reader always endeavors to put himself into complete sympathy with an author. The author is bound to make this as easy as possible, and even, if may be, to render it inevitable, to the end that the reader shall be forced to share the outlook of the writer, whether with conscious willingness or not. In obvious matters, like descriptions, the simple device of naming the point of view is enough. When Keats begins a poem, —

I stood tiptoe upon a little hill, —

he gives the point of view. So does Spenser when he opens the “Faerie Queene:” —

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.

Equally is Lowell giving the point of view in the opening of the essay on Chaucer, already quoted: “Will it do to say anything more about Chaucer?” Here he at once puts the reader into the attitude of examining with fresh attention a subject which has been greatly discussed; by implication he intimates that there is still enough wheat in the often-threshed straw to make it worth while once more to turn it over. With equal skill and felicity he puts the reader into the mood in which he writes of Carlyle by the first sentence of another essay: —

A feeling of comical sadness is likely to come over the mind of any middle-aged man who sets himself to recollecting the names of the authors that have been famous, and the number of contemporary immortalities whose end he has seen since coming to manhood.

The reader perceives at once that the subject which is to be treated is to be regarded as of less assured permanence of importance than has been sometimes held. Evidently Lowell would not allude to the many transient so-called immortalities if he had not at least a suspicion that the contemporary reputation of Carlyle is likely to be lessened by time. The key-note is struck, and what follows is governed by it.

The secret of holding the reader to the point of view consists largely of keeping strictly to it in writing. If the author does not change his position, the reader is unconsciously drawn to it. There is a persuasive power in mere persistency which is recognized by any one who has had to do with an obstinate person, and this power tells in literature as fully as in domestic life.

We come next to figurative language, so called; and at this point it used to be the fashion to overwhelm the student with a list of dreadful names which was in itself enough to paralyze the mental processes, and to discourage at once and forever all aspiration after excellence. The appalling words synecdoche, metonymy, antonomasia, asyndeton, anacolouthon, parrhesia, onomatopoeia, and the rest, seemed to fascinate the soul of writers on composition as completely as they dazed and stupefied the understanding of the unhappy student. Pedants have amused themselves by darkening wisdom with words without knowledge, until it is all but impossible to come at anything practical in the old-fashioned books, – which were invariably called “treatises.” It has been found that this is idle, and for the most part it has been laid aside. A few terms are for convenience still used, but in these days the effort, instead of being to give learned and pompous-sounding treatises on the art of composition, is if possible to set down what will assist the student in learning literary expression.

One of the first literary devices of which man’s mind availed itself in its efforts to communicate ideas, was the use of figures. The thought moves naturally from the near to the remote, and from that which is known to that which is unknown. If we attempt to describe or explain a thing, we instinctively compare it to something which is familiar. “It is like this,” we say; “it is similar to that thing which you know.” It has often been remarked that all language is full of what Trench happily calls the fossil remains of metaphors, – words which were once used to convey an idea by comparing it to something known, but of which the figurative force is now forgotten. It is hardly necessary to give examples, because every student has had his attention called to this class of words; but their number illustrates how natural comparisons are, and how constantly they are called to aid expression.

To comparison it is customary to give two names, according as the likeness is stated explicitly or is implied. If a writer says, “The officer followed his victim like a sleuth-hound,” – a phrase which used to come into all the detective stories, – he makes an explicit comparison between the officer and a hound. If he writes, “The sleuth-hound of justice followed the track of his prey,” – a phrase still to be met with in newspapers of a certain class, – the comparison is the same, but it is assumed instead of being explicitly stated. To the expressed comparison is given the name “simile;” to the comparison assumed, the name “metaphor.” It is of no great practical importance – unless in the line of encouraging carefulness in the discrimination of words – whether the distinction of names is carefully observed or not, but it is of some convenience in study.

The object of using figures is to add Clearness, or Force, or Elegance – or all of these – to the presentation of an idea. Constantly it happens that, by declaring that an unknown thing is like some known thing, the writer enables the reader to form an idea of it as it is. When in Job we read the beautiful simile, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” we are impressed by the passage of life with a vividness which could not be secured by any mere assertion, no matter how strong. The physical fact is so easily grasped that it makes more clear the intellectual reflection. In the same wonderful poem – and no one studying literature either for profit or for pleasure can afford to neglect the book of Job – there are beautiful figures enough to teach the art of using them were it otherwise forgotten. “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward;” “I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy;” “The house appointed for all living;” “He maketh the deep to boil like a pot;” “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season,” – it is impossible not to see how in every case the thought is made more clear by the comparison.

It is evident, too, that in each case cited the expression has gained not only in Clearness but in Force. The moment a likeness is suggested, the mind of the reader is led to make the comparison, and is thus alive and alert; while in each case the figure suggests far more than any bare statement of fact. Since the secret of Force lies in connotation, in the suggestiveness which leads the mind onward into the mood so that it seems to itself to originate the ideas which are really given to it directly or indirectly by the author, it follows that in the use of figures is one of the most effectual means of securing this quality. Job says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” and with the plain statement of the brevity of life come suggestions of the inevitableness of this brevity; we seem to see man tossed by the hand of the unseen, as a shuttle is thrown by the hand of the weaver, flung to and fro without power to stay or to resist. The whole despairing mood of the afflicted patriarch is summed up in the single simile. To come nearer to our own times, take that simile which is perhaps the most beautiful in English literature outside of Shakespeare: —

Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.

What is suggested is all the serenity of the eventide; the hush which comes between the daylight and the dark; the sense of peace; that feeling that a mystery is being wrought before our very eyes, when out of the faintly rose-purple haze of the sky throbs into radiance the first star. There is, too, that sense of restfulness that belongs to the twilight coolness, and, in some undefinable way, an idea of purity and innocence too high and too subtle to be defined. The gain in Force from such richness of suggestion is evident.

Even more closely than with Clearness or Force is the use of figures connected with Elegance. More than any other means at the disposal of the writer does this help to establish the mood which the author desires to share with his reader. More, perhaps, than any other means may figures be moulded to manifold uses, and thus they have large share in that adaptation of the means to an end, in which, as has been said, lies the secret of Elegance.

The proper use of figures is a thing which it is of the utmost importance for the student to master thoroughly; and I have ventured to set down a few rules which may be useful in practical work: —

1. Never use a figure without a definite purpose, and never simply for its own sake.

2. Never subordinate sense to figure.

3. Make all figures easily comprehensible.

4. Never make a comparison without realizing fully what it is.

5. Never push a figure too far.

The reason for giving the first rule is, that so many young writers – I say young writers as a matter of courtesy, since there are plenty of old ones of whom it is no less true! – are given to the fault of piling up figures in much the same way that a tasteless milliner sometimes puts on her bonnets all the artificial flowers that can be made to stick to them, or as a stupid architect kills the design of a building by overloading it with ornaments. Figures exist for the style, and not the style for the figures; and from this follows not only the first rule, but the second also. To make the figure of more importance than the thing which it is to illustrate or to reinforce is to exalt the servant above the master.

The third rule is justified by the fact that figures are used to increase the lucidity of style, and that in a manner all comparisons are to be looked upon as in the nature of illustrations. It follows that they must, in order to fulfill their function, be easily understood themselves. Examine this passage: —

… The Wandering Jew has seen
Men come and go as the fixed Pyramids
Have seen even the steadfast polar star
Shift in its place.

To see any force in this, it is necessary to be aware that, since the Pyramids were built, the North Star has been altered in the precession of the equinoxes. A writer has no right to appeal to such special knowledge. This is one of the reasons why there are so few of the discoveries of modern science, rich and varied as they are, which can effectively be used in simile. The allusions would not be commonly understood. Another reason, equally potent, is that in general the connotation of scientific facts is too practical and uninspiring to add to the interest of poetic or imaginative themes. In old days it was the fashion for minor poets to go as far afield as possible for similes, which were dragged into verse as a Comanche Indian drags into camp his captives. Foot-notes were generously provided for the enlightenment of the reader, and nobody seemed to see the absurdity of illustrating a thought by a figure so obscure that it had itself to be explained. The tropes of the minor poets of the last century remind one of the remark of the Scotch goodwife about a learnedly obscure commentary on the Scriptures: “’Tis a braw wise book, na dout; an’ the Bible does explain it wonderfu’.” If a writer will hold to his own experience for his similes, he will have little difficulty in deciding what is likely to be readily understood by the general reader; and if he will remember that, provided that there be nothing vulgar or ludicrous or commonplace in its suggestion, the more homely an allusion the more effective it is likely to be, he cannot go far wrong.

The rule never to make a comparison without realizing fully what it is should be regarded as being as binding as a moral precept. If this be obeyed, there is no danger of the production of that hybrid microbe with which the pages of sensational fiction swarm, which is known as the mixed metaphor. I took up in the smoking-room of a steamer not long ago a novel called “Half a Million of Money,” by Miss Amelia B. Edwards. I opened to a page on which was this sentence: —

Trefalden cast a hasty glance about the room, as if looking for some weapon wherewith to slake the hatred that glittered in his eye. – Chap. xciv.

I give carefully the origin of this, since it seems like an absurd mock simile manufactured for the occasion. If the author had felt the force of the word “slake,” and how it involves the idea of thirst, she could not have coupled it with “weapon” or with “glittered in his eye.” A thirst which is slaked with a sword and glitters in the eye needs only to be realized to be cast aside.

Goethe, in speaking of Klopstock, once said: —

An ode occurs to me where he makes the German muse run a race with the British; and indeed, when one thinks what a picture it is, where the girls run one against the other, throwing about their legs, and kicking up the dust, one must assume that the good Klopstock did not really have before his eyes such pictures as he wrote, else he could not possibly have made such mistakes. —Conversations of Goethe, November 9, 1824.

Of these lines of Montgomery, —

The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level to their fount, —

Macaulay observes: —

We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders or can possibly meander level with the fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two notions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and mounting upward. – Cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

It would be easy and it would be amusing to go on with examples of mixed figures and figures which are ineffective, but the point hardly needs further illustration.

Pushing a figure too far is a fault less common in these days than it has been at some periods of our literary history when fashions in writing were more ornate than at present. If a writer realizes what a simile means, he is not likely to fall into this error. It is when he introduces a figure for the sake of the figure, and not for the purpose of strengthening or making more clear what he is saying, that this fault occurs.

These lines of Cowper may serve as an example:

Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight,
Each yielding harmony disposed aright;
The screws reversed (a task which, if He please,
God in a moment executes with ease),
Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose,
Lost, till He tune them, all their power and use.

If this stopped with the second line, it might do well enough; but when the attention is forced to the consideration of the mechanical details of the harp, and the image of ten thousand thousand strings and a corresponding number of screws, and the notion applied to a man bereft of his wits, the idea becomes absurd, and whatever value the figure might have is entirely lost.

A clear realization of what he is doing will also prevent the writer from mingling figure and fact. “He was the guardian genius of Ireland, and had served with eloquence and credit in legislative halls,” could hardly have been written by one who felt clearly the meaning and significance of the figure. To realize how a guardian genius would look in legislative halls would have brought him at once to his senses. It is always necessary to have sharply defined in the brain whatever one is saying, but this is especially true of any use of language which invites the reader to loose his grasp upon absolute, literal fact.

The difference between simile and metaphor is one which need not be pressed very sharply. It is to be observed that as writing becomes more excited or impassioned there is less need of insisting upon formalities; so that as the writer warms his readers, he may assume a likeness instead of explicitly stating it. At the beginning of a passage it may be better to say, “Napoleon swept like a tempest over Europe,” whereas later, the reader having become interested in the theme, it is fitting to write, “Napoleon, the tempest which was sweeping over Europe.” There is probably no better rule than for the writer to do that which at the moment seems to him most natural, and then in revision to see if it strikes him as it did when he wrote it.