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CHAPTER IX.

HOW TO ACQUIRE A GOOD STYLE.

58. General Principle. - IF a youth of ordinary intelligence were asked how in his opinion he might make himself an accomplished mechanic, or machinist, or painter, or sculptor, he would promptly answer: "By studying the science, by receiving instruction from expert practitioners, by thoroughly examining the best specimens of workmanship, and by continual careful practice." This is felt to be true, and it is only by such a process that any one can become a good speaker or writer.

Some persons have a natural fluency and ease in communicating their thoughts, both by speech and by writing. The poets Pope and Watts, and many others, wrote verses while they were yet, according to common law, to be regarded as infants. Others, who have become equally eminent afterward, wrote at first with great difficulty, and not till they had reached maturer years. The best writers and ablest speakers have devoted great labor (consciously or unconsciously) to the improvement of their style.

59. Efforts of Gibbon to command a good Style.That ripe scholar and profound historian, Gibbon, the author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," details in his autobiography the care and immense study with which he formed his style; and when, in the prime of his life, he came to write the first volume of his great work, he says:

"The style of an author should be an image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation: three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect."*

This, too, was after he was already an author of writings both in the French and English languages that had elicited commendations from the best judges. Many have written history with less care, but how few read their productions, compared with the readers of Gibbon!

60. Example of Prescott. - Prescott's histories have been highly eulogized as models of good style. It is instructive to learn that after he was twenty-five years old, he resumed the study of Rhetoric with assiduous perseverance, and that when he began to write for the public, he examined and re-examined his own productions with great care. Some of his earlier chapters he re-wrote several times, always striving to improve them. He says of himself, after having written several chapters of his "Ferdinand and Isabella,"

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of familiar; sentences balanced by ands, buts, and semicolons; too many precise, emphatic pronouns, as these, those, which, etc., instead of the particles the, a, etc."*

After he had fully formed his style he became less particular. This is natural. The time to be particular is when young, and when habits and powers of perception are both forming for life.

61. Example of De Quincey. - De Quincey, a master of a style which has been highly eulogized, even to the last persisted in revising and even re-writing his productions with great care, before he would allow them to go before the public. Such also is the practice of Victor Hugo and many other eminent writers.

62. Webster as an Example. The style of Daniel Webster was very terse and vigorous. Generally simple, but occasionally highly ornamented, and remarkable for expressing strong thought and earnest feeling in what seems the best possible manner. Mr. Webster, in a conversation with friends in his old age, while modestly lamenting his own ignorance, as it seemed to him, when he looked out upon the boundless field of thought, expressed a fear that his style would degenerate, and added:

light, and there was light:' the greatest effort of power in the tersest and fewest words the command and the record one exertion of thought. So should we all aim to express things in words.”*

After such examples, it is superfluous to recommend to young writers great care and study in forming their style.

63. A Study of good Authors recommended. - Familiarity with the best authors is indispensable. Language and manner are largely learned by unconscious imitation. It is not well to waste time in the society of inferior writers, and listening to inferior speakers. Always choose the best you can command. Prefer the decisions of those whose position entitles them to authority, to your own. A book that pleases you much may be very faulty. The standard English and American authors should be read thoroughly. Read much, rather than many books. Discard inferior and too often illiterate newspapers, and select for your information a single newspaper of high literary merit, and spend the rest of your time devoted to reading with the best books you can command.

64. Translations from one Language into Another.Frequent translation from another language, ancient or modern, into English, or the translation of choice passages in our language into some other language, and then back again into English, with a comparison of the result with the original, is a good exercise.

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ery week. Whenever an error is detected, whether from a criticism of another person or by your own increasing familiarity with language and thought, discard it, and never repeat it.

66. Slowness and Rapidity of Composition. Perhaps the most valuable direction is the favorite motto of Erasmus, "Festina lente" "HASTEN SLOWLY!" Write slowly at first, studiously, thoughtfully. A good student should write at least one exercise, and it would be well if he would write several exercises, on all the different kinds of composition required, for instance, in Part II. of this book. After such careful exercise it will be proper for him to write rapidly, and with little or no thought about rules of Rhetoric, and with little revision.

67. Discard Imitation. - Take no writer or speaker for your model. If so, you will be likely to surpass him in his faults, and fall below him in his merits. Intentionally imitate no one, except it may be for a rhetorical pastime, to see what you can do. In your genuine productions, write from your own mind and heart.

Prescott well says on this subject:

"Indeed, it is impossible to separate language from thought in that delicate blending of both which is called style; at least, it is impossible to produce the same effect with the original by any copy, however literal. We may imitate the structure of a sentence, but the ideas which gave it its peculiar propriety we can not imitate.”*

Lessing well says that "Every man should have his own style as he has his own nose."

* Biographical and Critical Miscellanies, by William H. Prescott (Boston, 1861), p. 271.

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