Penology

“ He has given indeed by his pen, and the artist by his pencil, a reflection of the Ruins, but it is from a mirror of polished ebony, simply a fac-simile resemblance,—light and shade only,—a specimen of Daguerreotype! No one can mistake the rapid manner in which the true copy is impressed upon the mind, and that by the most easy and agreeable means—viz., the fascination of his style; but the colouring of life is not there,—the Soul of History is wanting! ”

“ He seemed to love his pen, and to write without effort,—never aiming, it is true, at the higher graces of style, somewhat diffuse, too, both in French and in English, but easy, natural, idiomatic, and lucid, with the distinctness of clear conceptions rather than the precision of vigorous conceptions, and a warmth which in his public letters sometimes rose to eloquence, and in his private letters often made you feel as if you were listening instead of reading. ”

“ Still, it is within the power of my pencil to transfigure your face with the divine light of martyrdom, thus conferring upon you an immortality on canvas—an eternity of fame which assuredly you would never gain by the productions of your pen, though literature, we know, be your forte. ”

“ Palæography is both an art and a science. Modern penmanship, while commonly regarded as more of an art than a science, is, in reality, less an art than a science. Indeed, in a broad and a not unwarranted generalization, present-day handwriting is seldom either an art or a science, but rather a desultory and questionable though necessary accomplishment.90 The invention of the typewriter has not added, in general, to the achievements of penmanship. Penmanship is one of the almost universally neglected sciences of modern times. ”

“ Perfect illumination is only writing made lovely; . . . But to make writing itself beautiful—to make the sweep of the pen lovely—is the true art of illumination;” And also that those who have acquired “a habit of deliberate, legible and lovely penmanship in their daily use of the pen, . . . may next discipline their hands into the control of lines of any length, and, finally, add the beauty of colour and form to the flowing of these perfect lines.” ”

“ It was a part, and far from the most important part, of a stupendous artistic movement, which spoke more readily and eloquently with brush and chisel than with pen, and expressed through their medium much that in an age more exclusively literary would have been committed to paper. ”

“ The tongue of the most subtle disputant, and the most eloquent orator, is but the pen with which God writes what he pleases. Why should we quarrel with the pen if bitter things be written against us, or idolize the pen if it write in our favour? David not only spoke what he thought of Christ, but wrote it, that it might spread the further and last the longer. His tongue was as the pen of a ready writer, that lets nothing slip. When the heart is inditing a good matter it is a pity but the tongue should be as the pen of a ready writer, to leave it upon record. ”

“ The pen is the best, the most excellent former and director of the tongue; and no wonder; for if reflection and thought easily excel what is thrown out by chance, and at a heat, careful and assiduous practice in composing will excel even those advantages. ”

“ To any one who may have an artistic quality of mind, and delights in beautiful lines and harmonious curves, these pages of ornamental penmanship will serve as models for practice and imitation, and every attempt at such an exercise as the one on this, or the following pages, will give greater strength and freedom of movement, and better command of the pen, so that it will conduce to an easy, flowing and elegant style of plain business writing, while affording a most pleasant and profitable employment in the cultivation of the taste. ”

“ But I felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated and noble manner of thinking, by which alone they could be cherished and preserved. Nothing vigorous or great can come from a pen totally venal. ”

“ It is in a mood such as this—a mood desirable above all others—that I take up my pen to reply to your kind and thoughtful letter. The interests we share have become welded together to the smallest particle; once again we have realized that mere strokes of the pen in fact, even the most unexpected whims in the past of a few individuals determine the history of countless numbers of others; and we readily leave it to the pious to thank their God for these accidents. We may perhaps laugh at this thought when we meet again in Leipzig. ”

“ For every topic, whether it regards art, genius, or learning, if it has any relation to the subject we write upon, immediately presents itself and occurs to the all-observing eye of strict inquiry and critical observation; and at the same time, it is a necessary consequence, that the periods and expressions, all of them the choice of their kind, should undergo the polish of the pen; hence arises perfection as to the propriety and disposition of expressions, and style in writing, not in the cadence and manner that suits the poet, but the orator. ”

“ The pen of the writer of romance is not the only implement which confers immortality upon man. The chisel of the sculptor, the pencil of the painter, and the needle of the high-born dame, can confer a lasting renown upon those whose deeds are worthy of{2} being remembered. ”

“ So great an art can only be learnt by continual practice; but this much is worth writing down, that, as in all good work, to know the thing with which you work is the core of the affair. Good verse is best written on good paper with an easy pen, not with a lump of coal on a whitewashed wall. The pen thinks for you; and so does the scythe mow for you if you treat it honourably and in a manner that makes it recognise its service. ”

“ If now a ready pen waited on fancy to state the facts it would establish an imaginative theory for centuries, for like gossip, a thing once printed in a book will long pass on unquestioned and be quoted or re-stated many times. ”

“ I am more and more persuaded that I have quite as much to do with the pen for the arts as the pencil, and if I can in my day so enlighten the public mind as to make the way easier for those that come after me, I don't know that I shall not have served the cause of the fine arts as effectively as by painting pictures which might be appreciated one hundred years after I am gone. ”

“ You supply me with the means of committing to paper what I have in me; I write with that. It is the pen that writes. Mankind do not doubt that; and most men have about as much genius for poetry as an old inkstand. ”

“ The art of the pen (we write on darkness) is to rouse the inward vision, instead of labouring with a Drop-scene brush, as if it were to the eye; because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted description. That is why the poets, who spring imagination with a word or a phrase, paint lasting pictures. ”

“ Though you know the whole Book of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash your whole body. ”

“ The language lends itself to perfect lucidity, and the Paris press allows men to write as men. Besides, the French admire word-painting, which is my particular vein. The English don't. They like composition. Here an author's pen must remain always a stick dipped in ink. It must never become what mine is—a painter's brush, wet, dripping, overflowing with oil colour. ”

“ But whatever the tongue might do, there was no doubt about the pen; we find him even undertaking discourses upon Animated Nature, and history—of Greece or of Rome. Has he then the plodding faculty, and is he a man of research? No; but he has the aptitude to seize upon the plums in the researches of others, and embody them in the amber of his language. ”

“ There is, therefore, a great need of a pen, vigorous and lively as yours, to quicken and revive the dying devotion of the age, to which nothing can afford such assistance as poetry, contrived on purpose to elevate us even above ourselves. ”

“ The ink perhaps may have its influence too, and the paper; but paramount is the pen. This, indeed, is the fundamental secret of essay-writing. Wed any man to his proper pen, and the delights of composition and the birth of an essay are assured. Only many of us wander through the earth and never meet with her—futile and lonely men.
And, of all pens, your quill for essays that are literature. There is a subtle informality, a delightful easiness, perhaps even a faint immorality essentially literary, about the quill. The quill is rich in suggestion and quotation. ”

“ Again, in writing, the pen does apparently just what the organs of speech do when certain words are to be produced. In the most delightful stage of composition, when the brain and the pen jog on comfortably together, it will often be found, on looking back a few lines, that a stranger has turned up who the author is positive has no right in such company. ”

“ But sure there is not one whose pen
⁠Was half so apt as thine
To catch the ears of listening men,
⁠Or wake the Sacred Nine.
None saw reflected in her glass
⁠A more distinguished face:
But thou art born too late, alas! ”

“ The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. ”

“ The inherited habit of composition in the form of oral verse and prose is vastly older than our modern practice of secluding ourselves and scratching down rows of little black symbols on a white expanse of paper, or still more incongruously tapping celluloid keys with the tips of our fingers. ”

“ The penholders, pens, pen-wipers, mucilage-bottle, everything, in fact, that an author really needs for the production of literature, save ideas, were so prepared that they could not fail to be visible to the weakest eye in the darkest night without the aid of other illumination. ”

“ Poetry always clings fast to old words, long after they have been dropped by prose; and this was the case in England before the Conquest. If we take a piece of Old English prose, say the tales translated by Alfred, or Ælfric's Homilies, or a chapter of the Bible, we shall find that we keep to this day three out of four of all the nouns, adverbs, and verbs em­ployed by the old writer; but of the nouns, adverbs, and verbs used in any English poem, from the Beowulf to the song on Edward the Confessor's death, about half have dropped for ever. ”

“ I can not too often urge you to use your pen in daily composition as a means to felicity and facility of speech. The act of writing out your thoughts is a direct aid to concentration, and tends to enforce the habit of choosing the best language. It gives clearness, force, precision, beauty, and copiousness of style, so valuable in extemporaneous and impromptu speaking. ”

“ And so my name I should in question draw,
Where asses bray, and prattling pies do chatter:
Yet (armed with truth) I publish with my pen,
That there the Almighty doth his blessings heap,
In such abundant food for beasts and men ”

“ No pen can sufficiently write, or note those things which he most eloquently, profoundly, and philosophically, had spoken in the said audience, neither can any tongue sufficiently declare the same; wherefore I have but only touched here the superficial matter of his talk, partly, and not wholly, noting the same. Finally, when by no means he might be persuaded to recant the premises, immediately, even in his presence, the sentence and judgment of his condemnation was given against him, and read before him. ”

“ Yes; you will say, a poet’s method is not that of his subject. I grant you, as to the order of time, in which the recital is made; for here, as Spenser observes (and his own practice agrees to the rule) , lies the main difference between the poet historical, and the historiographer: the reason of which is drawn from the nature of Epic composition itself, and holds equally let the subject be what it will, and whatever the system of manners be, on which it is conducted. Gothic or Classic makes no difference in this respect. ”

“ The very shape, aspect, and garments of the ideal creatures who move through its pages, even when drawn by the pen of the first master of fiction in the land, will be faint and confused to the blunter perception of the general reader, unless aided by the attendant pencil of the illustrative artist. ”

“ Palæography and the date of literary productions. The style and character of the handwriting is of great practical importance to literary criticism and has large historical value. A knowledge as to the history of the individual letters (and each individual letter of the alphabet has a history of its own, as to its genesis and development) and of the arrangement and the appearance of literary productions is of the utmost significance in ascertaining the age, meaning, and value of ancient documents. ”

“ So we should like to discover the effect of the ancient compositions upon the mediaeval, and observe how far the faculties and mental processes of classic authors, incorporate in their writings, were transmitted to mediaeval men, to become incorporate in theirs.
Unless you are Virgil or Cicero, you cannot write like Virgil or Cicero. Writing, real writing, that is to say, creative self-expressive composition, is the personal product and closely mirrored reflex of the writer’s temperament and mentality. ”