CHAPTER V

POWER IN ENGLISH STYLE

An element of great power and effectiveness in public speaking is a good English style. Among the many definitions of this phrase are these: Newman: "Style is a thinking out into language.' Wordsworth: "Style is the incarnation of thought." Buffon: "Style is the man." Dean Swift: "Style is proper words in proper places." Pater: "Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all, without that." Phelps: "Style is the general term by which we designate the qualities of thought as exprest in language.' W. J. Dawson: "Greatness of style springs from the great mind and the noble temper.

Style, then, is the result of a certain moral and mental discipline, in which a man at last expresses himself. As a result of this training words will fit naturally and readily into their proper places, while their arrangement will suggest clearness, rhythm, beauty, force, felicity, and other qualities. Carlyle says: "Care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking." Jean Paul Richter's counsel to the writer is equally applicable to the speaker: "Never write upon a subject without having first read yourself full of it, and never read without having first thought yourself hungry."

According to leading rhetoricians, the principal qualities to be developed are purity, precision, perspicuity, individuality, energy, elegance, and naturalness. To this end

the writer and speaker will endeavor to make these a part of his general mental habits. As a man accustoms himself to think, so is he likely to speak, or "As a man thinketh, so is he." He should closely study such masters of prose style as Macaulay, Newman, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and others, reading them aloud, and committing them to writing. A favorite model for students of English style is John Henry Newman, of whom Alexander Whyte says:

"The strength, the richness, the pliability, the acuteness, the subtlety, the spiritualness, the beauty, the manifold resources of the English language, are all brought out under Newman's hand, as under the hand of no other English author. 'Athanasius is a great writer,' says Newman, 'simple in his diction, clear, unstudied, direct, vigorous, elastic, and, above all, characteristic.' All of which I will repeat of Newman himself, and especially this-he is, above all, characteristic. If the English language has an angel residing in it and presiding over it, surely Newman is that angel. Or, at the least, the angel who has the guardianship of the English language committed to him must surely have handed his own pen to Newman as often as that master has sat down to write English. No other writer in the English language has ever written it quite like Newman. Every preface of his, every title-page of his, every dedication and advertisement of his, every footnote, every parenthesis of his, has a stamp upon it that at once makes you say that is Newman! He is simply inimitable. He is simply alone as a writer, and has no fellow."

Contrast with this high tribute the eloquent words of Newman himself: "While the many use language as they find it, the man of genius uses it indeed, but subjects it withal to his own purposes, and molds it according to his

own peculiarities. The throng and succession of ideas, thoughts, feelings, imaginations, aspirations, which pass within him, the abstractions, the juxtapositions, the comparisons, the discriminations, the conceptions, which are so original in him, his views of external things, his judgments upon life, manners, and history, the exercises of his wit, of his humor, of his depth, of his sagacity, all these innumerable and incessant creations, the very pulsation and throbbing of his intellect, does he image forth, to all does he give utterance, in a corresponding language, which is as multiform as this inward mental action itself and analogous to it, the faithful expression of his intense personality, attending on his own inward world of thought as its very shadow: so that we might as well say one man's shadow is another's as that the style of a really gifted mind can belong to any but himself. It follows him about as a shadow. His thought and feeling are personal, and so his language is personal."

According to Newman's definition, thought and speech are inseparable, so that a man who aspires to write well or to speak well should see to it that he first thinks well. Since the time of Cicero and Quintilian the advice given in this matter of English style has been to write, write, write. This applies to original writing as well as to copying the thoughts and language of others. This work should be done every day, and as much of it as possible. Macaulay wrote six pages every morning, reducing his first rough draft to two pages, and considered his day ill-spent when he neglected to do this. He was emphatic in his dislike for "fine writing," and said: "The feelings should, indeed, have their ornamental garb, but, like an elegant woman, they should be neither muffled nor exposed. The drapery should be

so arranged as at once to answer the purposes of modest concealment and judicious display."

As a model of purity of style the Bible offers an incomparable text. In combining simplicity of expression and sublimity of thought what outside of its holy pages can equal this: "Let there be light: and there was light!" And yet according to the style of some speakers, this would be rendered, as William Matthews says: "Let there be light, and there was a solar illumination!" In all the noted lists of "One hundred best books" the Bible is given first place. Archbishop Fénelon says: "The Scripture surpasses the most ancient Greek authors vastly in native simplicity, loveliness, and grandeur. the sublimity of Moses' songs. Never did any ode, either Greek or Latin, come up to the loftiness of the Psalms. Neither Homer nor any other great poet equalled Isaiah, describing the majesty of God. What is there in antiquity that can be compared to the lamentations of Jeremiah, when he tenderly deplores the misery of his country, or the prophecy of Nahum, when he foresees in the spirit the proud Nineveh fall under the rage of an invisible army? Everything is painted in such a lively manner as strikes the imagination: the prophet far outdoes Homer. Read likewise Daniel denouncing to Belshazzar the divine vengeance ready to overwhelm him, and try if you can. find anything in the most sublime original of antiquity that can be compared to those passages of Sacred Writ. As for the rest of Scripture, every portion of it is uniform and constant, every part bears the peculiar character that becomes it. In short, there is as much difference between the heathen poet and the prophets as there is between a false enthusiasm and the true."

Homer himself never reached

Sympathy, simplicity, enthusiasm, vitality, power, loftiness of spirit, love of truth, and other such qualities in the public speaker should first characterize his thinking habits, that they may naturally reflect themselves in the personality of his English style. Daily practise in writing stimulates the mental faculties, promotes accuracy and precision, and tends to make one systematic and logical. The prudent writer or speaker will avoid all attempts at "flowers of rhetoric," "fine writing," and "perfumed fancy" as having a tendency to impoverish his natural expression.

The public speaker should write for the ear as well as for the eye. He will summon his audience before him, gather the people around him in imagination, and mentally voice his thoughts to them as he writes. He should frequently stop writing and read aloud what he has written to determine whether it fits the mouth and "speaks well." Otherwise he may be composing a very good essay but a very poor speech. The ear is the most exacting critic in this matter. It is quick to detect a word out of place, an inharmonious combination of sounds, or other infelicity of speech.

The public speaker will have a scholarly care about his habits of conversation. He will not only avoid loose and incorrect speech, but will constantly aim to express himself at his best, without resorting to pedantry or stiltedness.

"We must write as carefully, and as much as we can, says Quintilian; "for as the ground, by being dug to a great depth, becomes more fitted for fructifying and nourishing seeds, so improvement of the mind, acquired from more than mere superficial cultivation, pours forth the fruits of study in richer abundance, and retains them with greater fidelity. For without this precaution, the very