Talks on Writing English

All essential and ultimate knowledge is natural, and all classification is artificial. Classification is founded upon natural facts, but it is an enumeration rather than an elucidation. It arranges; it does not explain.

Understand that I do not undervalue classification. The student can no more advance without it than he could climb to a roof without a ladder. I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that in all work – and perhaps especially in scientific work – it is of the highest importance to keep steadily in mind that it is not the ladder but the ascent which is of consequence; that the aim is not the schedule but the secrets of wisdom to which it helps us.

Thus it is that it is not for any value in the distinction itself, but solely as an expedient for our convenience in acquiring knowledge which is of worth, that we divide the sorts of composition. We classify, as in microscopy it is necessary to make sections for ease of examination. Do not fail to classify; but do not fail also to remember that nomenclature is not knowledge, that classification is not wisdom.

It is hardly necessary to remark how varied are the effects which writers may endeavor to produce. One is intent simply upon giving a clear and prosaic account of some matter; making a straightforward appeal to the understanding, and not troubling himself to go beyond this. A second is bent upon conveying to his readers some emotion, overpowering or delicate, painful or joyous, as the case may be. A third aims only to amuse; a fourth is determined to convince, to persuade, or to overcome; and so on through the long list of objects which are conceivable as coming within the scope of the writer’s range of intention.

Obviously, the treatment must be varied as the effect sought alters, and we divide compositions into classes by their most strongly marked characteristics. Different authorities have varied the number of divisions, and I have not felt bound to follow any of them. It seems to me well to assume that the kinds of composition are Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narration; and to take up their examination in this order.

From the classification commonly received this differs in a change of order and in the omission of Persuasion. Some writers, indeed, include here both Criticism and Translation; but Criticism is really a species of exposition, while Translation is whatever sort of composition its original may happen to be. That Persuasion should so long have been retained in the list is curious, although not so strange as might appear from the name. Persuasion, in the strict sense of the term, is of course not a kind of composition, but a quality of style. An argument, an exposition, a narrative, must alike be persuasive to succeed in winning the reader. Indeed, persuasion is a quality essential to all art. In the sense of being that which leads others to submit their personality to the artist, it is necessary to painter, musician, sculptor, and architect, no less than to writer. As used to designate a department of composition, Persuasion has been that which addresses, which appeals to the passions directly.[3 - Professor Hill’s definition of Persuasion seems to me to make it an argument which appeals to selfish prejudices or emotions.] The term is not a happy one, since it would seem that the vocative – the mood of address – might include denunciation, or invective, or praise, as well as persuasion. The obvious explanation of the use of such a division of composition seems to be that it was made to provide a place of dignity for oratory. In the days of our forefathers the art of eloquence held a high station, such as it is not likely to occupy soon again; and it was evidently felt that there should be a separate department for it in formal rhetoric. Persuasion as a division of composition seems to have been provided for oratory, much as a sinecure is established for a court favorite; but since platform eloquence has fallen somewhat into obscurity, it has been realized that Exposition and Argument cover the whole ground. If such a division were to exist still, it would be better to call it Oratory and be done with it; but if there were to be a fifth kind of composition, there is more ground for trespassing on the domain of Narrative and naming it Dramatization.

As a reason for departing from the time-honored custom of putting Description and Narrative before Exposition and Argument, I might perhaps content myself with saying that it is being found by instructors in whose judgment I have the highest confidence that the new order is the better. This is in part due to the fact that inexperienced writers naturally suppose that they can describe and narrate without having had especial training, and it is less difficult to detach them from bad habits of composition, if they begin with a sort of writing in which they have not contracted faults already. To put pupils in advanced composition first upon Description and Narration is apt to be to expose them to the danger of repeating whatever bad literary habits they may have, since it is in these forms of production that they are most likely to have contracted them. Another point of importance is that Description and Narration are so much more attractive and easily emotional than Exposition and Argument. I have already said that technique can be readily mastered only in an unemotional way. The great performers upon musical instruments have almost always been those who were trained technically while they were still so young or so undeveloped that the emotional capabilities of their nature were not matured. There is great danger in allowing the emotions to be aroused while training which is merely technical is going on. Awaken in the pupil all interest in technical perfection which is possible; to excite his emotional interest in subject or sentiment is dangerous, and obstructs his progress in the cultivation of skill in form and technique. Technical facility is gained by work not in itself inspiring, but done with the most patient exactness for the sake of the power it gives.

Assuming, then, that it is convenient to consider composition as being divided into the four sorts named, and that there are sufficient reasons for taking them in the order given, we find it necessary next to define. Making broad definitions, and leaving finer distinctions to be considered later, we may say: —

Exposition is a statement, an explanation, or a setting forth.

Argument is the endeavor to establish the truth or falsity of an idea or a proposition.

Description is the endeavor to present a picture.

Narration is a record of events.

If a traveler, for instance, should write of the Acropolis at Athens, he might treat the subject in any one of several ways. If he discuss its architectural character, its beauty, and the æsthetic feelings of delight which this awakens, if he explain its use, or make statements of any sort about it, he is making an Exposition; if he endeavor to establish the truth or untruth of especial views of its use, of theories of its age, or of any matters subject to controversy, he passes into Argument; if he by words strives to call up in the mind of the reader a picture of that glorious ruin, he is describing it; while, if he tell the story of the temple, he is evidently dealing in Narrative.

It is hardly necessary to say that these varieties of composition melt into one another. In a work of any extent, it is generally probable that all of them will be employed. As an engraver, cutting his block of box-wood, uses first one tool and then another, according to the line demanded by the picture, striving to bring out the effect which the artist desires, so the skilled writer takes up one variety of composition after another, employs now this and now that. It is the old question of adapting the method to the end sought, the effort to the effect desired. In almost any book there will be found Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative, as in a single rose are sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils. We study these separately, but always the art of writing is one as the rose is one.

X

EXPOSITION

Doubtless you all remember the amazement of the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” of Molière when he suddenly discovered that he had been speaking prose all his life without suspecting it. We may be in the same situation when it first becomes clear to us that without being aware of it we have been making expositions from the time we began first to speak. The statements, the explanations, the opinions which we give by hundreds every day are simply expositions in little. What we have to do now is merely to discover if possible what are the principles which will make the same sort of thing effective when it is carried further than in common speech, and is put in written instead of in spoken words.

To expound is to set forth the nature, the significance, the characteristics, and the bearing of an idea or a group of ideas. Exposition therefore differs from Description in that it deals directly with the meaning or intent of its subject instead of with its appearance. A good deal which we are accustomed inexactly to call description is really exposition. Suppose that your small boy wishes to know how an engine works, and should say: “Please describe the steam-engine to me.” If you insist upon taking his words literally – and are willing to run the risk of his indignation at being willfully misunderstood, – you will to the best of your ability picture to him this familiarly wonderful machine. If you explain it to him, you are not describing but expounding it; you are not making a Description but an Exposition, in so far as these words are applied in our present sense. The exact boundary lines of Exposition – or, for that matter, of any sort of composition – it is impossible to draw sharply. Not everything which claims to explain really makes clear, any more than all which wears the air of virtue shall escape scorching in “the everlasting bonfire.” One thing merges into another, and in the end all composition, as has been said and repeated already, is an indivisible whole.

The inexactness with which all terms of classification are used and must be used in literature is illustrated by the extension of the word “essay,” under which are grouped so many sorts of expositions. It has become the custom to apply this name to almost any brief monograph of leisurely or reflective character. The critical papers of Hazlitt, the historical orgies of Macaulay, the humorous confidences of Charles Lamb, and the argumentative tracts of Newman on theology or of Ruskin upon social questions, are all loosely classed together as essays. In contemporary writings, the suggestive mediæval studies of Vernon Lee, papers by Walter Pater from which the life has been exquisitely elaborated, the intimate revelations of nature by Richard Jefferies or John Burroughs, the delightful word-sonatas of Stevenson, and the criticisms of Leslie Stephen, fine and scholarly, are all given the same convenient name. The term “essay” is not unlike that useful contrivance known to travelers as a “hold-all,” into which may be huddled whatever there is not room for in more dignified receptacles. Fortunately the harm done is too small to matter. If a thing is good it is of no great consequence what we call it.

In an age like this, when the magazine flourishes and newspapers are thick strewn like sodden leaves in a November storm, the exposition is naturally one of the most common and one of the most practically useful of all forms of composition. The modern endeavor to make all men understand everything of course renders necessary an enormous amount of expository writing; so that the press turns out daily and hourly an innumerable number of small essays upon all imaginable topics. We live in an expository era. The scientific spirit demands that all knowledge shall be set forth, often to the discouragement of more imaginative forms of composition. This sort of work is certainly the one for which there is to-day the most constant and urgent call. The utilitarian would get along pretty much to his own satisfaction if no other form of writing than Exposition had been invented; and this is a utilitarian age.

Of all the qualities which we have hitherto considered, the one most likely to tell in Exposition is Clearness. In practical work the essential thing here is to make accurately intelligible the meaning which the writer would convey. In all more delicate matters this is impossible without recourse to the higher arts of literary technique; but in general all grace of style, all persuasiveness of presentation, all elegance of proportion and of manner, are subordinated to this primary necessity of lucidity. If one is striving to produce permanent literature these must not be neglected; but as far as common, practical, workaday prose is concerned, everything else is considered as of less importance than the conveying to the reader with sharpness the exact significance of what the writer is endeavoring to phrase.

Two things may be briefly remarked in passing: First, that this characteristic need of clear-cut accuracy makes especially appropriate the taking up of Exposition at the start; and second, that this sort of composition is of great help in intellectual growth. It is not that the other forms of expression do not call for accuracy. There is as much need for exactness in the imparting of fine shades of emotion suggested by a description or by a narrative as in the statement of an opinion. It is more easy, however, for the student to grasp the more tangible matter than the more subtile. He more readily appreciates the process of direct expression than that of delicate implication. It is true that Exposition in its higher forms deals with thought and emotion; but even there it handles them rather in a direct than in an indirect manner, rather by statement than by suggestion.

It is not difficult to see how the practice of this sort of composition is an aid to intellectual progress. Indeed, education is after all largely the phrasing for ourselves a statement of the truths of life and of the world about us. This sort of writing forces the learner to think sharply and clearly, to realize his thoughts. Exposition leads the student really to think instead of contenting himself with that mental muddlement in which the mind goes around and around, playfully like a kitten chasing its tail or earnestly after the fashion of a squirrel in his wheel, but getting ahead in neither case.

The two qualities which are, after clearness, most valuable in this species of writing are unity of the whole work and progression. The nature of Unity has already been sufficiently commented upon, but it is worth while to speak of a mechanical device by which much can be done to secure it. This is the making of a plan of an exposition before writing it. I have seldom found a student who willingly wrote out a skeleton of an exercise, and authors are hardly less reluctant to bother to put upon paper the plan of an essay. I am aware from my own experience how many excuses for not doing this necessary piece of drudgery may be invented by the evasive mind. It is of course a bore, when the head is full of a theme, to be obliged to stop and in a cold-blooded manner construct the framework of the essay which we are eager to dash off at full speed. Yet in the end it is a saving of time. It is better to do this in the first place than to have to pull the work to pieces afterward. When the mind is alert and excited, make notes, phrase the vital portions of the essay, set down the significant thoughts which come to you; but before attempting to write the completed whole have all these notes, these images, these phrases, arranged with reference to a plan, a schedule of the entire composition. This may be slight, but it should be essentially complete in the sense that it covers the whole ground. I believe it to be practically impossible for any writer to secure unity in a work of any extent without making a preliminary plan of some kind; and only men of rare gifts and much experience can safely carry this in the head. It is certainly true that the inexperienced writer should not trust himself to attempt any composition more than a page or two in length without actually writing out a skeleton beforehand.

As a matter of practical work, a young writer who is attempting an exposition should begin by thinking out his subject and putting his thoughts on paper. He should strive to phrase them well when he makes his first memoranda, for thoughts are like metal, much more malleable when they are hot. Often an ugly phrase which could without much trouble have been improved when it was making becomes stubbornly intractable after it has been for a time on paper. It is convenient to have these notes on slips of paper, since it is thus easy to arrange and to rearrange them. It is also of importance to consider how a subject will appear to a reader whose views are opposed to those of the writer. Think up all possible objections that might be made to the ideas expressed. Turn the subject over, and examine the wrong side; this is the best way to judge of the strength and the smoothness of the seams by which the parts are joined to make a whole.

The next step is to arrange the thoughts noted down. Make a plan of the essay with reference to its logical continuity. Look at the framework as a single thing. Remember that it is upon the completeness and sufficiency of this that the finished work must depend for its unity and its effect as a whole. To this scheme fit your notes. Do not trouble as yet about ornament or finish unless pregnant illustration or happy phrase suggest itself unsought. You cannot afford to go seeking these graces until the more substantial portions of your work are practically complete. Write slowly or swiftly according to your temperament, – but whatever your temperament do not suppose that good work is to be done otherwise than systematically and thoroughly.

Once the form is complete, the more you finish and polish the better. It is true that it is possible to polish the life out of a composition; but this is a danger much farther along the road than I should presume to act as a guide. I do not suppose that any author liable to spoil his work from over-finish is likely to trouble himself about what I may say on the subject; and certainly this fault lies so far ahead of most of us that we need not from fear of it stay our hand.

When the essay is planned and written and polished, and if possible laid aside and taken out and polished over again, – why, then, I am tempted to say, the wisest rule is that given by Edward Lear for the making of “Crumbobblious Cutlets:” “Procure some strips of beef, and having cut them into the smallest possible slices, proceed to cut them still smaller, – eight or perhaps nine times.” When you have made the work as good as you can make it, proceed to make it better still, – eight or perhaps nine times!

It is not impossible that it may occur to you that this sounds a good deal like hard work. I said to you in the beginning that to succeed in writing is a laborious task. It is a task infinitely interesting, and it is this which makes it endurable. The fine arts are possible only because men do not spare labor even if what is done must be wrought in the sweat of the brow and with the blood of the heart; art lives because the artist works from love, and does not count the cost. Unless the worker is willing thus to labor at literature, he will do well to leave it alone. If his heart is not in it he will in the end but waste good paper and ink which might have served better workmen for better uses.

Keeping still to practical details, we may note that it is well to accustom the mind to measure compositions by the number of words. This is the professional method, and it is the only way of coming at a fairly accurate idea of the size of a work and the proportionate length of its parts. It is not difficult to get into the mind a standard in the number of words one usually writes on a page. Once this is done, the rest is easy. The page becomes a personal measure of extent, and by it one without difficulty estimates the bulk of the whole or any part of a manuscript. Whoever has dealings with periodicals or with publishers is sure to come to this question of the number of words sooner or later, and it is well to learn it early.

One of the cleverest of American playwrights told me that he had made a careful study of the dramas of the modern French authors to see how many words they use to produce an effect. So many words he found to be the average for a love scene, so many in this situation and so many in that. It was not that he endeavored to follow exactly these rules; but he was thus getting at the secrets of construction. This was a practical method of judging proportions. The incident is worth mention not only as an illustration of the way in which words are used as a measure in literature, but also as showing how tirelessly and with what minute care the professional worker is willing to labor.

One of the first practical uses to which the student is called to apply this measure of the number of words is that of estimating proportion. The space given to any division of a subject, the number of words in which it is embodied, largely determines its relation to the whole. It is somewhat difficult to illustrate this point, but by way of indicating the sort of analysis which it is well for the student now and then to make of essays which he finds especially effective, I must give an example. I have taken Macaulay’s essay of Machiavelli, and made a summary of it with a view of showing the proportionate length at which this clever author writes of the different points upon which he touches. In this paper he is setting forth his view of the character of that dazzlingly clever Italian whose family name has furnished the language with an epithet for whatever is most trickily cunning, while by an absurd paradox his Christian name is held to have given us an affectionate pseudonym for the devil, – “Old Nick.” The whole monograph is something in the nature of a special plea, and without great violation of propriety might be smuggled under Argument. It is an attempt to show that the characteristics in the writings of Machiavelli which have made his name a hissing and a byword belong rather to the time than to the man.

After a brief introduction follows a statement of the disrepute in which Machiavelli has been held. This is intentionally made strong to the verge of absurdity, and to it is added a brief acknowledgment that “The Prince,” Machiavelli’s famous and infamous book, is indeed shocking. This requires about three hundred and fifty words.

Assuming the attitude which he wishes the reader to take, that of a puzzled seeker for truth, Macaulay states several theories which might account for the moral obliquity of the Italian, yet points out that his personal career was elevated, patriotic, and just; and that there is in “The Prince” much good as well as much evil. He also calls attention to the fact that at the time the book was written it apparently shocked nobody. To this are given about eight hundred words.

This leads directly to the conclusion which is the key-note of the whole essay: —

It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those times that we must seek for the real explanation of what seems most mysterious in the life of this remarkable man.

This proposition being the one which it is the aim of the essay to establish, nearly seventy-five hundred words, almost half of the whole, are given to tracing the growth of the peculiar conditions of moral sentiment which obtained in Italy in the time when Machiavelli wrote. The subject is led on toward the next point in this way: —

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices… Posterity, … finding the delinquents too numerous to be all punished, … selects some of them at hazard to bear the whole penalty… In the present case the lot has fallen on Machiavelli; a man whose public conduct was upright and honorable.

The essayist then turns from the man to his work, pointing out the merits of his novels, comedies, and letters. About twenty-three hundred words are given to this, – rather more than an eighth of the paper. Some eighteen hundred follow on his public services. His struggles to establish a regular army are emphasized, both because here he appears to the best advantage, and because this line of thought is artfully made to lead up to and to suggest the view of “The Prince” which is put forward immediately after: the view that the book was really designed to forward the substitution of a regular army for the mercenary troops which had demoralized all Italy. The proportion is here admirably judged. Enough space is given to the matter to make the point seem one of dignity and weight, yet not so much as to let it appear as if the author were insisting upon it too much. The economy of effect is observed throughout; enough is always done, but never too much.

We have now, roughly speaking, thirteen thousand out of the not much over sixteen thousand words in the essay; and the author has practically done his work. He has pretty well developed his theory, and the remainder of the monograph is given to making it more clear and to enforcing it. To the personal merit of Machiavelli is devoted about a quarter of the entire essay; to the immorality of the age and its influence upon him, nearly one half; to the admirable way in which he played his part in public life, nearly an eighth. To the hatred and abhorrence of Machiavelli which the essayist desires to overcome, he gives directly but three or four hundred words in the whole sixteen thousand. Proportion so careful and so effective as this can only be the result of studied and accurate design.

A word of caution may not be amiss. Proportion is to be determined not by the interest of the writer or by his ease in writing upon particular points, but by the relation of the parts to the whole. The reason for saying this is that almost any author is liable to be led away by the facility with which it is possible for him to enlarge upon certain points. An opportunity presents itself for the introduction of a charming episode; there is a temptation to develop a thought, a sentiment, a seductively favorite theory; and the result of yielding to this is apt to be a violation of unity. What the old-fashioned writers – as if confession were an excuse – were accustomed to confess by saying, “But this is a digression,” hopelessly injured the effect of a composition as a whole. Only the clever and cunning artificer of style can introduce digressions without marring the fair proportions of the complete work.

Proportion, here as elsewhere, is emotional as well as mechanical. One must bear in mind the fact that a few emphatic words are of more account than many mild and commonplace ones. Consider not only the space given to particular portions of a work, but the stress laid upon them.

And here it is well to consider a feature of human frailty. Such is man’s weakness that blame always counts for more than praise. If I were to say to you that looked at from a purely literary standpoint “The Heavenly Twins” is morbid and unhealthy rubbish; that “Trilby” is a pleasant transient excitement; but that “The Return of the Native” seems to me the most notable English novel since Thackeray – you would have no difficulty in remembering that I condemned “The Heavenly Twins;” you would have a fairly clear idea that I had been less enthusiastic than is the general public about “Trilby;” and you would perhaps recall vaguely that there was something else – really it is astonishing how quickly a name slips from the memory! – which I praised.[4 - A droll incident happened in connection with this illustration when these lectures were first delivered. As the audience left the hall one lady said to another, a stranger: “I beg your pardon, but could you tell me the name of the third book that was given, – the one that the lecturer said we should forget?” This was of course conclusive of nothing, but it was amusingly to the point.] The point is one to be remembered when one is dealing with delicate shades of emphasis.

As I have more than once used Carlyle in warning, it is no more than fair to mention him here as one of the masters of emotional emphasis. He had an instinct for the proportion of stress, and used it with the greatest success. It is an excellent lesson in the study of this quality to analyze the cumulative and unified effect of the stronger chapters of the “French Revolution.”

I have spoken of progression as being one of the important matters to be considered in connection with Exposition. Perhaps a better name for what I mean would be continuity. It is necessary to arrange ideas in a logical order which is not only unbroken, but which is perfectly obvious. It is not enough that the author is aware how one thought logically follows another; he must make it evident to all who read. He must remember that so long as the connection of ideas is clear and inevitable the reader is led on unconsciously; while every pause which the reader is forced to make to see how one statement follows from another leaves him less fully in the author’s control. So great a thinker and so great a writer as Emerson materially lessened the circle of his readers by a lack of this very quality. The ordinary student often finds it hard to supply the thoughts which make the sequence of ideas complete. Emerson stalks like a giant from mountain peak of thought to mountain peak, while the reader is often sorely puzzled to know how to cross the deep gullies between. Emerson was a genius, and prophesied so gloriously on his mountain-tops, that we struggle forward after him despite all difficulties. Those who are not geniuses cannot hope that readers will follow their lead unless the road is shown and the chasms bridged.

One may go farther than this in insisting upon the need of continuousness in literature. The present age is impatient of being called upon to take trouble in apprehension, so that it is necessary to use every art – whether of connectives, of arrangement of thought, of sequence of ideas or incidents – to make more inevitably evident the connection of parts. Indeed, this must be not only plain but easy and attractive. To blaze out a path through the woods avails in pioneer life and in the beginnings of literature; but when civilization has advanced, the way must be graded until it is comfortable to the foot accustomed to smooth pavements and velvet carpets. Sequence in expository writing should usually be so complete that the reader goes forward so glidingly that the mere progress itself shall be a pleasure.

XI

EXPOSITION CONTINUED

In expository writing – and indeed the rule might safely be applied to all composition – it is wise to proceed from the near to the remote; from cause to effect; from the physical to the mental; from the clear to the obscure; and from that which is generally allowed to that which is doubtful or disputed.

It is well to proceed from the near to the remote. We do not say “All the way from London to here,” but “All the way from here to London.” The exception would be when the point of view is that of one in London, since then that city would be the near, and “here” the remote. “Near” in this connection is always near to the point of view. We say, “What we do will be talked of all the way from here to London.” We say also, “When Tom came home from England last year, he was ill all the way from London to here.” We begin with that which the mind accepts most readily. The principle is the same which we have already found to underlie the use of figurative language. There the unknown is made clear by comparison with the known; and it is well to lead the mind from what is near, physically or mentally, to what is remote. Take this example from Stevenson: —