There is the grand style in perfection; and any one who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times better from repeating those lines than from hearing anything I can say about it. “Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling what we say by examples. I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. I think this definition will be found to cover all instances of the grand style in poetry which present themselves. I think it will be found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand style. And I think it contains no terms which are obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those who do not understand what is meant by calling poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. But the noble or powerful nature - the bedeutendes individuum of Goethe is not enough. For instance, Mr. Newman 1 has zeal for learning, zeal for thinking, zeal for liberty, and all these things are noble, they ennoble a man; but he has not the poetical gift: there must be the poetical gift, the divine faculty,' also. And, besides all this, the subject must be a serious one (for it is only by a kind of license that we can speak of the grand style in comedy); and it must be treated with simplicity or severity. Here is the great difficulty: the poets of the world have been many; there has been wanting neither abundance of poetical gift nor abundance of noble natures; but a poetical gift so happy, in a noble nature so circumstanced and trained, that the result is a continuous style, perfect in simplicity or perfect in severity, has been extremely rare. One poet has had the gifts of nature and faculty in unequalled fulness, without the circumstances and training which make this sustained perfection of style possible. Of other poets, some have caught this perfect strain now and then, in short pieces or single lines, but have not been able to maintain it through considerable works; others have composed all their productions in a style which, by comparison with the best, one must call secondary. "The best model of the grand style simple is Homer; perhaps the best model of the grand style severe is Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording admirable examples of both styles; he has the grand style which arises from simplicity, and he has the grand 1 Mr. Francis William Newman, a translator of "The Iliad." style which arises from severity; and from him I will illustrate them both. In a former lecture I pointed out what that severity of poetical style is, which comes from saying a thing with a kind of intense compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost haughty way, as if the poet's mind were charged with so many and such grave matters, that he would not deign to treat any one of them explicitly. Of this severity the last line of the following stanza of the Purgatory is a good example. Dante has been telling Forese that Virgil had guided him through Hell, and he goes on: 'Indi m' han tratto su gli suoi conforti, Che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti.'1 'Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climbing and circling the Mountain which straightens you whom the world made crooked.' These last words, 'la Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti, 'the Mountain which straightens you whom the world made crooked,' — for the Mountain of Purgatory, I call an excellent specimen of the grand style in severity, where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid plainness and clearness: "Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna Ch' io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; Quivi convien che senza lui rimagna.' 2 'So long,' Dante continues, 'so long he (Virgil) saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there where Beatrice is; there it behoves that without him I remain.' But the noble simplicity of that in the Italian no words of mine can render. "Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are truly grand; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest, so long as we attend most to the great personality, to the noble nature, in the poet its author; the simple seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical: in the other there is something intellectual, something which gives scope for a play of thought 1 Dante: Il Purgatorio, xxiii. 124. which may exist where the poetical gift is either wanting or present in only inferior degree: the severe is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable." 1 A striking example of exposition without unity is given by Dr. Phelps: "A Presbyterian clergyman in a Southern city once preached a sermon on these words, 'It containeth much.' The text was a fragment broken from a verse in the Book of Ezekiel, 'Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup: . . . it containeth much.' The passage is a comminatory one addressed to the ancient people of God. The preacher, probably in that vacuity of thought which is apt to dilute the beginnings of sermons, pounced upon the word 'it,' which had the distinction of heading the text. He remarked, that, as the context indicated, 'the word had for its antecedent the word "cup." "Thy sister's cup: it containeth much:" thou shalt drink of it; of thy sister's cup shalt thou drink; it containeth much: a full cup, brethren, it containeth much: yes, thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup; it containeth much, - these are the words of our text.' "I give you in the rough my impressions of the sermon after thirty years, not claiming verbal accuracy. The impression of the exposition, however, which has remained in my mind, justifies this inane mouthing of the text as the preliminary to the following exposition. The exegesis of the word 'cup' was the burden of it. I do not exaggerate in saying that he told us of the great variety of senses in which the word 'cup' is used in the Scriptures. A marvellous word is it. The Bible speaks of the 'cup of salvation,' and, again, of the 'cup of consolation;' then it is the 'cup of trembling,' and the wine-cup of fury.' Babylon is called a 'golden cup.' The cup of Joseph which was hidden in the sack of Benjamin was a 'silver cup.' The Pharisees, we are told, 'made clean the outside of the cup;' and, he shall not lose his reward who giveth a cup of 1 Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism; On Translating Homer, Last Words. cold water in the name of a disciple.' And therefore in the text we are told, ‘Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup: it containeth much.' The preacher rambled on in this manner, with his finger on the right page of the concordance, till at last the sound of the word 'cup' was made familiar to the audience; and having accumulated, as I have in this paragraph, a respectable bulk of 'sounding brass,' the preacher announced as his subject of discourse the future punishment of the wicked.” 1 that govern all good writing apply to expo sition. Clearness and unity are essential to every exposition: clearness that lights up every part of the subject, unity that keeps the subject constantly in view. The principles These qualities are, however, not enough for exposition in its highest form. A writer who expects to interest his readers should comply with the principles that govern all good writing. He should avoid prolixity as well as excessive conciseness: while taking care not to leave a topic until he has made himself understood, he should not dwell on it after he has made himself understood. He should never explain that which does not need explanation. He should never move so slowly as to make his hearers or his readers impatient. "Mr. Jones,' said Chief Justice Marshall on one occasion, to an attorney who was rehearsing to the Court some elementary principle from Blackstone's Commentaries, 'there are some things which the Supreme Court of the United States may be presumed to know.' Many an audience would give the same reproof to some expository preachers, if they could. Their defenceless position should shield them from assumptions of their ignorance which they can not resent. Be generous, therefore, to the intelligence of your hearers. Assume sometimes that they know the Lord's Prayer. Do not quote the Ten Commandments as if they had been revealed to you, instead of to Moses. The Sermon on the Mount is a very an cient specimen of moral philosophy: do not cite it as if it were an 1 Austin Phelps: The Theory of Preaching, lect. xiii. enactment of the last Congress. The Parables are older than the 'Meditations' of Aurelius Antoninus: why, then, rehearse them as if from the proof-sheets of the first edition? In a word, why suffer the minds of your audience to be more nimble than your own, and to outrun you? "It degrades exposition to putter over it in a pettifogging way, trusting nothing to the good sense of an audience, and assuming nothing as already known to them. On the text, 'I am the good shepherd,' said a preacher in the chapel of this Seminary, and that after twenty years of experience in the pulpit, —‘a sheep, my brethren, is a very defenseless animal. A shepherd is one who takes care of sheep.' If a New England audience can not be supposed to know what a sheep is, what do they know?” 1 In exposition, as in other kinds of composition, a writer should stimulate interest by variety in expression. He may avail himself of every means by which he can explain or illustrate his thought, comparison, contrast, antithesis, climax, epigram, figure of speech,- but he should never forget that these are means to the end of exposition and are useful so far and so far only as they conduce to that end. Exposition Except in the most abstruse writing, exposition may be, and usually is, accompanied by passages of description or of narration that give life and variety to the composition and at the same time help to communicate combined with the meaning intended. Exposition may preand narration. pare the way for a description or a narrative; it often serves to explain what the descriptive writer or the narrator is talking about; and it sometimes uses description or narration as a means to its own end.2 description 1 Austin Phelps: The Theory of Preaching, lect. xiii. 2 See the passage from Taine (pp. 305, 306), and that from Webster (pp. 308-310). |