style chiefly by public speaking; and it is in them also that the kindred faults of synonyms strung together and of redundant expletives are most commonly seen. Perhaps, indeed, the choicest specimens of continuous slip-shod in the language are furnished by the writings of celebrated orators. How dilute the tincture, what bagginess of phraseology round what slender shanks of meaning, what absence of trained muscle, how seldom the nail is hit on the head! It is not every day that a Burke presents himself, whose every sentence is charged with an exact thought proportioned to it, whether he stands on the floor and speaks, or takes his pen in hand. And then, not only in the writings of men rendered diffuse by much speaking after a low standard, but in the tide of current writing besides, who shall take account of the daily abundance of that more startling form of slip-shod which rhetoricians call Confusion of Metaphor? Lord Castlereagh's famous "I will not now enter upon the fundamental feature upon which this question hinges," is as nothing compared with much that passes daily under our eyes in the pages of popular books and periodicals-tissues of words in which shreds from nature's four quarters are jumbled together as in heraldry; in which the writer begins with a lion, but finds it in the next clause to be a waterspout; in which icebergs swim in seas of lava, comets collect taxes, pigs sing, peacocks wear silks, and teapots climb trees. Pshaw! technicalities all! the mere minutiæ of the grammarian and the critic of expression! Nothing of the kind, good reader! Words are made up of letters, sentences of words, all that is written or spoken of sentences succeeding each other or interflowing; and at no time, from Homer's till this, has anything passed as good literature which has not satisfied men as tolerably tight and close-grained in these particulars, or become classic and permanent which has not, in respect of them, stood the test of the microscope. We distinguish, indeed, usefully enough, between matter and expression, between thought and style; but no one has ever attended to the subject analytically without becoming aware that the distinction is not ultimate that what is called style resolves itself, after all, into manner of thinking; nay, perhaps (though to show this would take some time) into the successive particles of the matter thought. If a writer is said to be fond of epithets, it is because he has a habit of always thinking a quality very prominently along with an object; if his style is said to be figurative, it is because he thinks by means of comparisons; if his syntax abounds in inversions, it is because he thinks the cart before he thinks the horse. And so, by extension, all the forms of slip-shod in expression are, in reality, forms of slip-shod in thought. If the syntax halts, it is because the thread of the thought has snapped, or become entangled. If the phraseology of a writer is diffuse; if his language does not lie close round his real meaning, but widens out in flat expanses, with here and there a tremor as the meaning rises to take breath; if in every sentence we recognise shreds and tags of common social verbiage-in such a case it is because the mind of the writer is not doing its duty, is not consecutively active, maintains no continued hold of its object, hardly knows its own drift. In like manner, mixed or incoherent metaphor arises from incoherent conception, inability to see vividly what is professedly looked at. All forms of slip-shod, in short, are to be referred to deficiency of precision in the conduct of thought. Of every writer it ought to be required at least that he pass every jot and tittle of what he sets down through his mind, to receive the guarantee of having been really there, and that he arrange and connect his thoughts in a workmanlike manner. Anything short of this is-allowance being made for circumstances which may prevent a conscientious man from always doing his best-an insult to the public. Accordingly, in all good literature, not excepting the subtlest and most exuberant poetry, one perceives a strict logic linking thought with thought. The velocity cases. with which the mind can perform this service of giving adequate arrangement to its thoughts, differs much in different With some writers it is done almost unconsciously-as if by the operation of a logical instinct so powerful that whatever teems up in their minds is marshalled and made exact as it comes, and there is perfection in the swiftest expression. So it was with the all-fluent Shakespeare, whose inventions, boundless and multitudinous, were yet ruled by a logic so resistless, that they came exquisite at once to the pen's point, and in studying whose intellectual gait we are reminded of the description of the Athenians in Euripides-"those sons of Erectheus always "moving with graceful step through a "glittering violet ether, where the nine "Pierian muses are said to have brought "upyellow-haired Harmony as their com"mon child." With others of our great writers it has been notably differentrejection of first thoughts and expressions, the slow choice of a fit per-centage, and the concatenation of these with labour and care. Prevalent as slip-shod is, it is not so prevalent as it was. There is more careful writing, in proportion, now than there was thirty, seventy, or a hundred years ago. This may be seen on comparing specimens of our present literature with corresponding specimens from the older newspapers and periodicals. The precept and the example of Wordsworth and those who helped him to initiate that era of our literature which dates from the French Revolution, have gradually introduced, among other things, habits of mechanical carefulness, both in prose and in verse. Among poets, Scott and Byron -safe in their greatness otherwise— were the most conspicuous sinners against the Wordsworthian ordinances in this respect after they had been promulgated. If one were willing to risk being stoned for speaking truth, one might call these two poets the last of the great slip-shods. The great slipshods, be it observed; and, if there were the prospect that, by keeping silence about slip-shod, we should see any other such massive figure heaving in among us in his slippers, who is there that would object to his company on account of them, or that would not gladly assist to fell a score of the delicates with polished boot-tips in order to make room for him? At the least, it may be said that there are many passages in the poems of Scott and Byron which fall far short of the standard of carefulness already fixed when they wrote. Subsequent writers, with nothing of their genius, have been much more careful. There is, however, one form of the slip-shod in verse which, probably because it has not been recognised as slipshod, still holds ground among us. consists in that particular relic of the It poetic diction" of the last century which allows merely mechanical inversions of syntax for the sake of metre and rhyme. For example, in a poem recently published, understood to be the work of a celebrated writer, and altogether as finished a specimen of metrical rhetoric and ringing epigram as has appeared for many a day, there occur such passages as these : "Harley's gilt coach the equal pair attends." "What earlier school this grand comedian rear'd? His first essays no crowds less courtly cheer'd. From learned closets came a sauntering sage, Yawn'd, smiled, and spoke, and took by storm the age." "All their lore Illumes one end for which strives all their will; Before their age they march invincible." "That talk which art as eloquence admits Must be the talk of thinkers and of wits." "Let Bright responsible for England be, And straight in Bright a Chatham we should see." "All most brave In his mix d nature seem'd to life to start, When English honour roused his English heart." That such instances of syntax inverted to the mechanical order of the verse should occur in such a quarter, proves that they are still considered legitimate. But I believe-and this notwithstanding that ample precedent may be shown, not only from poets of the last century, but from all preceding poets-that they are not legitimate. Verse does not cancel any of the conditions of good prose, but only superadds new and more exquisite conditions; and that is the best verse where the words follow each other punctually in the most exact prose order, and yet the exquisite difference by which verse does distinguish itself from prose is fully felt. As, within prose itself, there are natural inversions according as the thought moves on from the calm and straightforward to the complex and impassioned -as what would be in one mood "Diana of the Ephesians is great," becomes in another, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"-so, it may be, there is a farther amount of inversion proper within verse as such. Any such amount of inversion, however, must be able to plead itself natural-that is, belonging inevitably to what is new in the movement of the thought under the law of verse; which plea would not extend to cases like those specified, where versifiers, that they may keep their metre or hit a rhyme, tug words arbitrarily out of their prose connexion. it should be asked how, under so hard a restriction, a poet could write verse at all, the answer is, "That is his difficulty." But that this canon of taste in verse is not so oppressive as it looks, and that it will more and more come to be recognised and obeyed, seems augured in the fact that the greatest British poet of our time has himself intuitively attended to it, and furnished an almost continuous example of it in his poetry. Repeat any even of Tennyson's lyrics, If where, from the nature of the case, obedience to the canon would seem most difficult-his Tears, idle tears," or "The splendour falls," and see if, under all that peculiarity which makes the effect of these pieces, if of any in our language, something more than the effect of prose, every word does not fall into its place, like fitted jasper, exactly in the prose order. So and what do you say to Mr. Tennyson's last volume, with its repetition of the phrase "The Table Round"? Why, I say that, when difficulty mounts to impossibility, then even the gods relent, even Rhadamanthus yields. Here it is as if the British nation had passed a special enactment to this effect :-" Whereas "Mr. Tennyson has written a set of poems on the Round Table of Arthur "and his Knights, and whereas he has represented to us that the phrase "The Round Table,' specifying the "central object about which these poems "revolve, is a phrase which no force "of art can work pleasingly into Iambic verse, we, the British nation, con"sidering the peculiarity of the case, "and the public benefits likely to 2. There is the vice of the Trite. Here, at length, we get out of the region of mere verbal forms, and gaze abroad over the wide field of our literature, with a view everywhere to its component substance. We are overrun with the Trite. There is Trite to the right hand, and Trite to the left; Trito before and Trite behind; the view is of vast leagues of the Trite, inclosing little oases of true literature, as far as the eye can reach. And what is the Trite? It is a minor variety of what is known as Cant. By Cant is meant the repetition, without real belief, of sentiments which "Man is a microcosm," may Translated into positive language, the protest against the Trite might take the form of a principle, formally avowed, we believe, by more than one writer, and certainly implied in the practice of all the chiefs of our literature-to wit, that no man ought to consider himself entitled to write upon a subject by the mere intention to write carefully, unless he has also something new to advance. We are aware, of course, of the objection against such a principle arising from the fact that the society of every country is divided, in respect of intelligence and culture, into strata, widening as they descend from the limited number of highly-educated spirits at the top who catch the first rays of all new thought, down to the multitude nearest the ground, to whom even Newton's apple would be new, and among whom the aphorism "Things find their level" aphorism would create a sensation. It is admitted at once that there must, in every community, be literary provision for this state of things-a popular literature, or rather a descending series of literatures, consisting of solutions more or less consisting of solutions. strong of old knowledge and of common sentiments, in order that these may percolate the whole social mass. Everything must be learnt some time; and our infants are not to be defrauded in their nurseries, nor our boys and girls in their school-time, of the legends and little facts with which they must begin as we did, and which have been the outfit of the British mind from time as respects immemorial. But, even popular and juvenile literature, the rule still holds that, to justify increase, there must be novelty-novelty in relation to the constituencies addressed; novelty, if not of matter, at least of method. Else why not keep to the old popular and elementary books-which, indeed, might often be good policy? If one could positively decide which, out of competing hundreds, was the best existing Latin school-grammar, what a gain to the national Latinity it would be, if, without infraction of our supreme principle of liberty, as applied even to grammars, we could get back to the old English plan, have Latin taught from that one grammar in all the schools of the land, and concentrate all future talent taking a grammatical direction on its gradual improvement? Returning, however, to current literature, more expressly so-called-to the works of history, the treatises, the poems, the novels, the pamphlets, the essays, &c. that circulate from our better libraries, and lie on the tables of the educated-we might show reason for our rule even here. Allowing for the necessity even here of iteration, of dilution, of varied and longcontinued administration, ere new truths or modes of thought can be fairly worked into the minds of those who read, new facts rightly apprehended, or new fancies made effective, should we not have to report a huge over-proportion of the merest wish-wash? What a reform here, if there were some perception of the principle that correct writing is not enough, unless one has something fresh to impart. What! a premium on the love of paradox ; a licence to the passion for effect; more of straining after novelty Alas! the kind of novelty of which we speak is not reached by the kind of straining that is meant, but by a process very different-not by talking right and left, and writhing one's neck like a pelican, on the chance of hitting something odd ahead; but by accuracy of silent watch, by passive quietude to many impressions, by search where others have left off fatigued, by open-air rumination and hour-long nightly reverie, by the repression again and again of paying platitudes as they rise to the lips, in order that, by rolling within the mind, they may unite into something better, and that, where now all is a diffused cloud of vapoury conceit, there may come at last the clearing flash and the tinkle of the golden drop. Think, think, think-is the advice required at present by scores of hopeful writers injuring themselves by luxury in commonplace. The freshly-evolved thought of the world, the wealth of new bud and blossom which the mind of humanity is ever putting forth-this, and not the dead wood, is what ought to be taken account of in true literature; and the peculiarity of the case is that the rate of the growth, the amount of fresh sproutage that shall appear, depends largely on the intensity of resolution exerted. But, should the associations with the word "novelty" be incurably bad, the expres sion of the principle may be varied. It may be asserted, for example, that, universally, the proper material for current literature, the proper element in which the writer must work, is the material or element of the hitherto uncommunicated. Adapting this universal expression to literature as broken down into its main departments, we may say that the proper element for all new writing of the historical order is the hitherto unobserved or unrecollected, for all new writing of the scientific or didactic order the hitherto unexplained, for all new poetry the hitherto unimagined, for all new writing for purposes of moral and social stimulation the hitherto unadvised. There may, of course, be mixture of the ingredients. Among the forms of the Trite with which we are at present troubled is the repetition everywhere of certain observations and bits of expression, admirable in themselves, but now hackneyed till the pith is out of them. By way of example, take that kind of imagined visual effect which consists in seeing an object defined against the sky. How this trick of the picturesque has of late been run upon in poems and novelstrees 66 against the blue sky," mountains against the blue sky," everything whatever "against the blue sky," till the very chimney-pots are ashamed of the background, and beg you wouldn't mention it! And so we have young ladies seated pensively at their windows "looking out into the Infinite," or "out into the Night." Similarly there are expressions of speculative import about man's destiny and work in the world, so strong in real meaning that those who promulgated them did the world good service, but parroted now till persons who feel their import most hear them with disgust. For the very test that a truth has fallen upon a mind |