Edward Albert

“ It is a time of unrest, of a hardening of temper, of the decay of the larger Victorian ideals, and of the growth of a more critical, cynical, and analytic spirit. The period, one will find, is not very rich in literature of the highest class; and looking back over our literature, and studying the rise and fall of the literary impulse, the alternation of rich harvest with lean years, one is tempted to regard the post-Victorian age as an interval between two epochs, between the great Victorian age and another, still to be, that will be as truly great. ”

“ The English Bible has been a potent influence in our literature. Owing largely to their poetical or proverbial nature, multitudes of Biblical expressions have become woven into the very tissue of the tongue: “a broken reed,” “the eleventh hour,” “a thorn in the flesh,” “a good Samaritan,” “sweat of the brow,” and so on. More important, probably, is the way in which the style affects that of many of our greatest writers. The influence is nearly all for the good; for a slight strain of the Biblical manner, when kept artistically within bounds, imparts simplicity, dignity, and elevation. ”

“ His humor has none of Addison’s simpering prudishness; it is broader and less restrained, with a naïve, pathetic touch about it that is reminiscent of Goldsmith. His pathos is more attractive and more humane. But Steele’s very virtues are only his weaknesses sublimed; they are emotional, not intellectual; of the heart, and not of the head. He is incapable of irony; he lacks penetration and power; and much of his moralizing is cheap and obvious. He lacks Addison’s care and suave ironic insight; he is reckless in style and inconsequent in method. ”

“ Hardy has no outstanding tricks of style. The general impression given is one of immense strength and dignity. His vocabulary is copious, but handled with scholarly care and accuracy. He is apt in phrase and pithy in expression, and in moments of emotion his prose moves with a strong rhythmic beauty. In his poetry the style may sometimes be crabbed and unorthodox, but only to suit a definite satiric purpose. We may sum up by saying that in his style, as in all the other constituents of his writing, he is always the sane and catholic artist. ”

“ Doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning; the question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so—I mean with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself ”

“ All the Chaucerian features help to create this modern atmosphere: the shrewd and placidly humorous observation, the wide humanity, the quick aptness of phrase, the dexterous touch upon the meter, and, above all, the fresh and formative spirit—the genius turning dross into gold. Chaucer is indeed a genius; he stands alone, and for nearly two hundred years none dare claim equality with him. ”

“ His meter is among the most discussed in our literature. Its merits and demerits are quite clear to view. Against it we can urge its artificiality, its lack of originality, and the vile creeping paralysis that it communicated to the other metrical forms. Yet in its favor we must recognize its strength, unbreakable and pliable, like a strong bow, its clearness, point, and artistic brevity, and its incomparable excellence in some forms of satire and narrative. It is unprofitable to compare it with blank verse and other forms. We must recognize it as in a class apart. ”

“ The care which has been taken of you, and (to do you justice) the care you have taken of yourself, has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire but the knowledge of the world, manners, address, and those exterior accomplishments. But they are great and necessary acquisitions, to those who have sense enough to know their true value; and your getting them before you are one-and-twenty, and before you enter upon the active and shining scene of life, will give you such an advantage over all your contemporaries, that they cannot overtake you: they must be distanced. ”

“ The two earlier stages of the Travels have a charm and vivacity that delight old and young. The bitterness of the satire lurks in the allegory, but it is so delicately tinseled over that it does not repel. The crowded incidents are plausible and lively, and they are often spiced with a quaint and alluring humor; his comments upon mankind are shrewd and arresting, as well as satirical, and are yet not brutal nor obscene. The style is Swift’s best: not mannered or labored; clean, powerful, and tireless ”

“ It is almost impossible to do justice to his style. It is old-fashioned, bearing echoes and odors from older writers like Sir Thomas Browne and Fuller; it is full of long and curious words; and it is dashed with frequent exclamations and parentheses. The humor that runs through [428] it all is not strong, but airy, almost elfish, in note; it vibrates faintly, but in application never lacks precision. His pathos is of much the same character; and sometimes, as in Dream-Children, it deepens into a quivering sigh of regret. ”

“ As a poet Scott’s reputation has depreciated and continues to depreciate. His faults, like his merits, are all on the surface: he lacks the finer poetical virtues, such as reflection, melody, and delicate sympathy; he (in poetry) is deficient in humor; he records crude physical action simply portrayed. Even the vigor that is often ascribed to him exists fitfully, for he loads his narrative with overabundant detail, often of a technical kind. When he does move freely he has the stamp, the rattle, and the swing of martial music. ”

“ His prose is the model of the middle style: on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour. ”

“ The gulf between the work of the two men is still very great. In Marlowe there is none of that benign humanity that clings to even [109] the grimmest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Marlowe’s characters are bleak in nature and massive in outline; enormous and majestical, but forbidding and almost inhuman. His style has the same qualities: glowing with a volcanic energy, capable of a mighty soaring line and phrase (“Marlowe’s mighty line,” as Ben Jonson called it) , but diffuse, truculent, exaggerated, and bombastic. ”

“ The style is highly artificial and mannered; but we must remember that Pope is jocular all through, and that he is purposely pitching his style as high as the subject permits. It abounds in rhetorical devices, such as climax, antithesis, and apostrophe. The effect produced is like that of a crackle of colored fireworks; smart epigrams explode in almost every line, and conceits dazzle with their brilliance. Yet so great an artist is Pope that by sheer skill he prevents the work from being flashy or vulgar: the workmanship is too delicate and precise. ”

“ Every true reader of poetry partakes of a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature; and no one can be completely such, who does not love, or take an interest in everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy—from the highest heart of man, to the most pitiable of the low. ”

“ Outside this mass of middle prose, the style of Ruskin stands highest in the scale of ornateness; of a like kind are the scholarly elegance of Pater and the mannered dictions of Meredith and Stevenson. The style of Carlyle and that of Macaulay are each a peculiar brand of the middle style, Macaulay’s being hard, clear, and racy, and Carlyle’s gruff and tempestuous, with an occasional passage of soothing beauty.
Of the simpler writers there is a large number, among whom many novelists find a place. ”

“ I considered that our magnificent heritage from the Greeks in dramatic literature found sufficient room for a large proportion of its action in an extent of their country not much larger than the half-dozen counties here reunited under the old name of Wessex, that the domestic emotions have throbbed in Wessex nooks with as much intensity as in the palaces of Europe, and that, anyhow, there was quite enough human nature in Wessex for one man’s literary purpose. ”

“ Concerning the literary quality of the sonnets there can be no dispute. In the depth, breadth, and persistency of their passion, in their lordly but never overweening splendor of style, and, above all, in their mastery of a rich and sensuous phraseology, they are unique. Byron once remarked that the tissue of poetry cannot be all brilliance, any more than the midnight sky can be entirely stars ”

“ Poor love must dwell
Within no climate but what’s parallel
Unto our honoured births; the envied fate
Of princes oft these burdens find from state
When lowly swains, knowing no parent’s voice
Of negative, make a free and happy choice. This is a curious liquid measure. The pause is irregularly distributed, and the rhythm is light and easy.
Cowley and Denham likewise obtain much credit for the introduction of the new measure; but the chief innovator is Edmund Waller (1606–87) . Dryden, in his dedication to The Rival Ladies says, “Rime has all the advantages of prose besides its own. ”

“ In this group of poems, which are elegiac in nature, Mr. Hardy’s lyrical genius develops a late but splendid bloom. It is unique in our history for a poet over seventy years old to surpass all the efforts of his prime. In the depth of their emotion and the terse adequacy of their style they represent the consummation of his poetry. ”

“ Her place in the history of fiction is remarkable. Her qualities are of a kind that are slow to be recognized, for there is nothing loud or garish to catch the casual glance. The taste for this kind of fiction has to be acquired, but once it is acquired it remains strong. Jane Austen has won her way to a foremost place, and she will surely keep it.
We add a short extract to illustrate her clear and careful style, her skill in handling conversation, and the quiet irony of her method. ”

“ The satire is irresistible. Nothing escapes it; nothing can resist it. When he has finished we feel he has made a wilderness of everything we call sacred and beautiful.
The great strength of Swift’s satiric method lies in its cosmic elemental force. Unlike that of Pope, it is never paltry or mean. It has a terrifying intensity, caused by [239] an aloofness that is inflexible, dominating, and unchallengeable. Yet The Tale of a Tub, while it fully reveals the power that stamps him as a writer of the first rank, throws into prominence the faults that seriously mar his achievement. ”

“ This meter of Hudibras is remarkable. It is varied and yet uniform, and it carries the tale with an easy relish. Though it is sometimes almost doggerel, it has always a kind of distinction, and each couplet is clenched with an ingenious rhyme that is the most amusing feature of all. ”

“ It has been well said: “At the beginning of every revolution men hope, for they think of all that mankind may gain in a new world; in its next phase they fear, for they think of what mankind may lose.” This was the case with the French Revolution. The elder writers of the period, with Wordsworth and Coleridge as conspicuous examples, hailed the new era with joy. ”

“ In considering the life of Shakespeare we have at our disposal a fair number of facts; but on these facts the industry of commentators has constructed an additional mass of great magnitude and complexity. It is therefore the duty of the historian with only a limited space at his disposal to keep his eye steadily upon the established facts and, without being superior or disdainful, to turn toward speculation or surmise, however ingenious or laborious, a face of tempered but obdurate skepticism. ”

“ Lycidas, which is to be reckoned as among the highest of Milton’s achievements, is something quite new in English poetry. In form it is pastoral, but this artificial medium serves only to show the power of Milton’s grip, which can wring from intractable material the very essence of poetry. The elegy has the color and music of the best Spenserian verse; but it has a climbing majesty of epithet and a dignified intensity of passion that Spenser does not possess. [165] Its meter is an irregular stanza-sequence and rhyme-sequence of a peculiar haunting beauty. ”

“ Her first work, beginning as a burlesque of the horrible in fiction, finishes by being an excellent example of her ideal novel. As her art develops, even the slight casualties of common life—such an incident, for example, as the elopement that appears in Pride and Prejudice—become rarer; with the result that the later novels, such as Emma, are the pictures of everyday existence. Only the highest art can make such plots attractive, and Jane Austen’s does so. ”

“ Like the travels of Mandeville, the Morte d’Arthur is a compilation. In the case of Malory’s books, French Arthurian romances are drawn upon to create a prose romance of great length and detail. However diverse the sources are, the book is written with a uniform dignity and fervor that express the very soul and essence of romance. The prose style, never pretentious, is always equal to the demands put upon it, and frequently it has that flash of phrase that is essential to the creation of a literary style. Malory is, in short, our first individual prose stylist. ”