Hilaire Belloc

“ Nothing is Good save the Useful, and it would have been sheer vanity to have published so small a selection, whatever its merit, unless it could be made to do Something, to achieve a Result in this strenuous modern world. It will not be the fault of the book, but of the reader, if no creative impulse follows its perusal, and the student will have but himself to blame if, with such standards before him, and so lucid and thorough an analysis of modern [viii] Literature and of its well-springs, he does not attain the goal to which the author would lead him. ”

“ It is the execution that is defective, and it is to execution that Mr. Mayhem must direct himself if he would rise to the level of his own great conceptions.
We will take the sonnet line by line, and make our meaning clear, and we do this earnestly for the sake of a young poet to whom the Anglo-Saxon race owes much, and whom it would be deplorable to see failing, as Kipling appears to be failing, and as Ganzer has failed. ”

“ The third canon of style is the occasional omission of a verb or of the predicate. Nothing is more agreeably surprising, and nothing more effective. I have known an honest retired major-general, while reading a novel in his club, to stop puzzling at one place for an hour or more in his bewilderment at this delightful trick, and for years after he would exclaim with admiration at the style of the writer. ”

“ Thorpe was in such peril, not one could be got to do more than lean upon the parapet shouting for the police, though they should have known how useless was that body of men in any other than its native element. Alas! how frail a thing is human friendship, and how terribly does misfortune bring it to the test. ”

“ Consider the lilt. ‘Lilt’ is the ‘Túm ti ti túm ti túm’ effect which you may have felt in my best verse.”
I assured him I had indeed felt it.
[104]
“Lilt,” he continued, “is the hardest thing of all to acquire. Thousands attempt it, and hundreds fail. I have it (though I say it who should not) to perfection. It is the quality you will discover in the old ballads, but there it is often marred by curious accidents which I can never properly explain. Their metre is often very irregular, and I fancy that their style (which my Work closely resembles) has suffered by continual copying. ”

“ Dr. Caliban continued in a few simple words to convince me that my foolish pride alone stood between this young genius and the fame he deserved. He [97] pointed out what a weight would lie upon my mind were that poet some day to become famous, and to be able to say when I presented myself at his receptions:
“Get ye hence: I know ye not!”
He added the awful words that death might find us at any moment, and that then we should have to answer, not for our reasons or our motives, but for the things we have done, and for the things we have left undone. ”

“ But William Shakespeare also is of us: he will have it on the surface or not at all; as a man hastening to beauty, too eager to delve by the way. And with it all how he succeeds! What grace and what appreciation in epithet, what subtle and sub-conscious effects of verb! What resonant and yet elusive diction! ”

“ Though they are of far more importance than any other branch of contemporary journalism, yet it is impossible to compare their publication to a creative act of pure literature.
It may be urged that such Revelations as are written in the office of the newspaper publishing them are not only literature, but literature of a very high order. They are, on the face of it, extremely difficult to compose. If they are to have any chance of deceiving the public, the writer must thoroughly know the world which he counterfeits; he must be able to copy its literary style, its air, its errors. ”

“ Caliban laid his hand in a fatherly way upon my shoulder and said:
“You are still young; you do not know how long fame may take to find a man, if the way is not pointed out to her; and if she takes too long, sometimes he dies of a broken heart.” ”

“ If the Work can raise the income of but one poor journalist, or produce earnings, no matter how insignificant, for but one of that great army which is now compelled to pay for the insertion of its compositions in the newspapers and magazines, the labour and organizing ability devoted to it will not have been in vain. ”

“ She told me you were thinking of becoming an architect; I sincerely hope you will, for I believe you have every aptitude for that profession. Plod on steadily and I will go warrant for your writing verse with the best of them. It is inevitable, my dear Peter, that one’s early verse should be imitative and weak; but you have the ‘inner voice,’ do but follow the gleam and never allow your first enthusiasms to grow dim. ”

“ The next moment may decide your whole career. You must glance at the Revelation, and judge in that glance whether the public will believe it even for two full hours. The whole difference between a successful and an unsuccessful journalist lies in that power [146] of sudden vision; nor will experience alone achieve it, it must be experience touched with something like genius. ”

“ Nowhere was this fine temper of unflinching courage and sterling common sense more apparent than in the great crisis of the Dreyfus case. No man stood up more boldly, or with less thought of consequence, for Truth and Justice in this country. ”

“ The Government is that of a practical and commonsense people. It will guide or protect, but it cannot pretend to coerce. Lagarde therefore flourishes, the Bishop is venerated, the monastery grumbles in silence, and there is some talk of an Hungarian journalist, born in Constantinople, whose father did time for cheating in the Russian Army, writing one of his fascinating anti-religious romances in nine hundred pages upon the subject. ”

“ My dear Peter,
“No; I should be doing an injustice to my readers if I were to print your verse in the Doctrinaire; but you must not be discouraged by this action on my part. You are still very young, and no one who has followed (as you may be sure I have) your brilliant career at the University can doubt your ultimate success in whatever profession you undertake. ”

“ The young writer may be trusted to know his duty instinctively in this matter, but should his moral perception be blunted, a sharper argument will soon remind him of what he owes to the Common Conscience of Christians. He that cannot write, and write with zeal, upon the Balkans, or upon Finland, or upon the Clerical trouble, or upon whatever lies before us to do for righteousness, is not worthy of a place in English letters: the public and his editor will very soon convince him of what he has lost by an unmanly reticence. ”

“ The growth of the metropolis entered largely into Mr. Hogg’s enlightened prevision of the future, and he obtained promises from a large number of people to build houses upon his land, which houses should, after a term of years, become his (Hogg’s) property, and cease to belong to those who had paid to put them up. How Mr. Hogg managed to obtain such promises is still shrouded in mystery, but the universal prevalence of the system to-day in modern England would surely prove that there is something in our Imperial race which makes this form of charity an element of our power. ”

“ Turn, therefore, to the dead—who are no longer alive, and with whom no quarrel is to be feared. Make them reappear and lend weight to your contention. Their fame is achieved, and may very possibly support your own. This kind of writing introduces all the elements that most profoundly affect the public: it is mysterious, it is vague, it is authoritative ”

“ As for annotation, it is the easiest thing in the world. True to the general principle which governs all good journalism, that the giving of pleasure should always be preferred to the giving of pain, let your annotations pleasantly recall to the reader his own stock of knowledge, let them be as obvious as possible, and let him not learn too much from your research. ”

“ A reputation can be based upon a book of short lyrics which will in time procure for its author Reviewing work upon several newspapers, [76] and sometimes, towards his fortieth year, the editorship of a magazine; later in life it will often lead to a pension, to the command of an army corps, or even to the governorship of a colony.
I feel, therefore, no hesitation in describing at some length the full process of its production, or in presenting to the student a careful plan of the difficulties which will meet him at the outset. ”

“ I know a young man in Red Lion Square who can do the Grandiose very well, and I am going to boom him when I think the time has come; but the Student-in-Ordinary cannot do it, so he may put it out of his head.
I will take the Simple or Prattling style first. Choose a subject from out of doors, first because it is the fashion, and secondly because you can go and observe it closely. For you must know that manufactured verse is very like drawing, and in both arts [85] you have to take a model and be careful of details. ”

“ The student cannot be too strongly urged to abandon the regular and daily task of set columns—signed or unsigned—for the occasional Flash of Verse if he desire to provoke great wars and to increase his income. It may not always succeed, but the proportion of failures is very small, and at the worst it is but a moment’s energy wasted. ”

“ I have known a fortune to be made by the omission of a full stop, and a comma put right in between a noun and its adjective was the beginning of Daniel Witton’s reputation. A foreign word misspelt is also very useful. Still more useful is some allusion to some [181] unimportant historical person or event of which your reader cannot possibly have heard.
As to the practice, which has recently grown up, of writing only when one is drunk, or of introducing plain lies into every sentence, they are quite unworthy of the stylist properly so called, and can never permanently add to one’s reputation. ”

“ At a moment when a whole district of the metropolis is compulsorily passing into the hands of a soulless corporation, it is intolerable that the proprietors of land in that district should receive no compensation [123] for the historical importance of their estates. Manning Green, which will soon be replaced by the roar and bustle—or bustle and confusion, whichever you like—of a great railway station, is one of those centres whence the great empire-builders of our race proceeded in past times. ”

“ It is, however, in the sextet that the chief slips of the sonnet appear, and they are so characteristic of the author’s later errors, that we cannot but note them; thus, “purchased not with gold or Frankincense” is a grievous error. It is indeed a good habit to quote Biblical phrases (a habit which has been the making of half our poets) , but not to confuse them: frankincense was never used as coin—even by the Hittites. “Incommensurate” is simply meaningless. How can blood be “incommensurate”? We fear Mr. Mayhem has fallen into the error of polysyllabic effect, a modern pitfall. ”

“ The poet showed no jealousy of the animal. There was the full, hearty Anglo-Saxon friendship for a comrade and even for a rival, and I met the same tone again on a further page in the line:
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
I looked up at Mr. Caliban and said:
“Well?”:—for these short phrases are often the most emphatic.
“Well,” said Dr. Caliban, “that man must not be allowed to go under. He must be made, and we must make him.” ”

“ Special Prose is an advanced kind of literature, too great an attraction to which might at first confuse rather than aid the student; and I should hardly make a place for it in a straightforward little Text-book.
Mrs. Caliban’s wishes in all matters concerning this work must be observed, and I have done what she desired me, even to the degree of printing Mrs. Railston’s advertisement, though I am certain that great Authoress does herself harm by this kind of insistence ... It is no business of mine.... ”

“ Here is a man with something in him quite peculiar and apart—and he is unknown! It is England through and through, and the best of England; it is more than that. Even where I disagree with him, I find something like a living voice. ”

“ The less fortunate must be content with Pulping. In the midst of their chagrin they will be consoled by the thought that their book enjoys a kind of resurrection, and will reappear beneath some other, and—who [188] knows?—perhaps some nobler form. The very paper upon which these words are printed may once have formed part of a volume of verse, or of Imperialist pamphlets subsidised by the South African Women’s League. ”

“ THE INTERVIEW. It is now some years ago since I was sitting in Mr. Caliban’s study, writing in his name upon the Balance of Power in Europe. I had just completed my article, and passed it to him to sign, when I noticed that he was too much absorbed in a book which he was reading to pay attention to my gesture.
Men of his stamp enforce courtesy in others by their mere presence. It would have been impossible to have disturbed him. I turned to a somewhat more lengthy composition, which was also to appear above his signature, entitled, “The Effect of Greek Philosophy upon European Thought.” ”

“ Caliban’s profound conclusion: “Whosoever works for Humanity works, whether he know it or not, for himself as well.” [7]
I earnestly beseech the reader of this text-book, especially if he be young, to allow no false shame to modify his zeal in judging the vileness of the Continent. We know whatever can be known; all criticism or qualification is hypocrisy; all silence is cowardice. There is work to be done. Let the writer take up his pen and write.
I had some little hesitation what model to put before the student. ”

“ One has now and then to strike a deeper note, and striking a deeper note is so simple, that I wonder it has not occurred to others of our poets. You have got to imagine yourself in a church, and you must read over your manuscript to yourself in that kind of hollow voice—you know what I mean. ”

“ The Short Story, on account of its simplicity, coupled with the high rates of pay attached to it, attracts at the outset the great mass of writers. Several are successful, and in their eager rapture (I have but to mention John and Mary Hitherspoon) produce such numerous examples of this form of art, that the student may ask what more I have to teach him? In presenting a model for his guidance, and reproducing the great skeleton lines upon which the Short Story is built up, I would remind my reader that it is my function to instruct and his to learn ”