3. FUNCTIONS AND DIGNITY OF STYLE.

(FROM AN ESSAY ON STYLE.")

STYLE has two separate functions-first, to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which is obscure to the understanding; secondly, to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities. Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes from previous mistreatment, but oftener from original perplexities investing its very nature. Upon the style it is, if we take that word in its largest sense, upon the skill and art of the developer, that these perplexities greatly depend for their illumination. Look, again, at that other class of cases, when the difficulties are not for the understanding, but for the practical sensibilities as applicable to the services of life. The subject, suppose, is already understood sufficiently; but it is lifeless as a motive. It is not new light that is to be communicated, but old torpor that is to be dispersed. The writer is not summoned to convince, but to persuade. Decaying lineaments are to be retraced, and faded colouring to be refreshed. Now, these offices of style are really not essentially below the level of those other offices attached to the original discovery of truth. He that, to an old conviction, long since inoperative and dead, gives the regeneration that carries it back into the heart as a vital power of action; he, again, that by new light, or by light trained to flow through a new channel, reconciles to the understanding a truth which had nitherto seemed dark or doubtful-both these men are really, quoad us that benefit by their services, the discoverers of the truth. Yet these results are among the possible gifts of style. Light to see the road, power to advance along it—such being amongst the promises and proper functions of style, it is a capital (.e. very great) error, under the idea of its ministeriality, to undervalue this great organ of the advancing intellect an organ which is equally important considered as a tool for the culture and popularization of truth, and also (if it had no use at all in that way) as a mode1 per se of the beautiful, and a fountain of intellectual pleasure. The vice of that appreciation which we English apply to style, lies in representing it as a mere ornamental accident of written composition, a trivial embellishment, like the mouldings of furniture, the cornices of ceilings, or the arabesques of tea-urns. On the con

(1) Mode, a term of philosophy, indicating the particular form or appearance under which a reality becomes manifest to the human understanding.

trary, it is a product of art the rarest, subtlest, and most intellectual; and, like other products of the fine arts, it is then finest when it is most eminently disinterested, that is, most conspicuously detached from gross palpable uses.

GEORGE CANNING.'

THE LATENT POWER OF ENGLAND.

(FROM "SPEECH AT PLYMOUTH,”2 DELIVERED IN 1823.)

LET it not be said that we cultivate peace, either because we fear, or because we are unprepared for war; on the contrary, if eight months ago the Government did not hesitate to proclaim that the country was prepared for war, if war should be unfortunately necessary, every month of peace that has since passed has but made us so much the more capable of exertion. The resources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources, we but accumulate those means. Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town, is a proof they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness-how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage, how quickly would it put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as is one of these magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself, while apparently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion.

(1) "Among our own orators, Mr. Canning seems to be the best model of the adorned style, In some qualities of style he surpassed Mr. Pitt. His diction was more various, sometimes more simple, more idiomatical, even in its more elevated parts. It sparkled with imagery, and was brightened by illustration."Mackintosh.

(2) Canning had at this time just been appointed foreign secretary, and was speaking at Plymouth after his election for the borough.

But God forbid that that occasion should arise. After a war sustained for nearly a quarter of a century, sometimes singlehanded, and with all Europe arrayed at times against her, or at her side, England needs a period of tranquillity, and may enjoy it without fear of misconstruction. Long may we be enabled, gentlemen, to improve the blessings of our present situation, to cultivate the arts of peace, to give to commerce, now reviving, greater extension, and new spheres of employment, and to confirm the prosperity now generally diffused throughout this island. Of the blessings of peace, gentlemen, I trust that this borough, with which I have now the honour and happiness of being associated, will receive an ample share. I trust the time is not far distant, when that noble structure (i.e. the breakwater), of which, as I learn from your Recorder, the box with which you have honoured me, through his hands, formed a part, that gigantic barrier against the fury of the waves that roll into your harbour, will protect a commercial marine not less considerable in its kind, than the warlike marine of which your port has been long so distinguished an asylum; when the town of Plymouth will participate in the commercial prosperity as largely as it has hitherto done in the naval glories of England.

EDWARD IRVING.1

VINDICATION OF THE AUTHOR'S STYLE.

(FROM THE PREFACE TO "FOR THE ORACLES OF GOD.

PUBLISHED IN 1824.)

FOUR ORATIONS."

FOR the taste and style of composition I carry my appeal from the judgment of upstart unknown pretenders, to the great

(1) It has been thought advisable to present a specimen of the manner of writing of one whose mind acted strongly on the minds of his generation, and whose works still praise him. Irving's style, though to some extent an echo of that of the theologians of the seventeenth century, is by no means an imitation of it. He plunged profoundly himself into the depths whence they drew their inspiration, conversed with their minds on topics of common interest, and almost insensibly learnt to speak their language. He combines in his writings much of the stately argumentation of Hooker, the splendid imagery of Taylor, and the heart-touching unction of Baxter. In some respects he is more ancient than those ancients, adopting, for instance, the th of the third person singular, which in their days was obsolescent, if not obsolete.

fathers of English composition, who have been my companions, my models, first of thought, and next of the utterance of thought. In whom, and in the Holy Scriptures, I have found forms for expressing the deeper feelings of the heart, and the sublimer aspirations of the soul, which I could not find in the writers of later times, but which seem reviving again in one or two of our living authors, for the blessing of this ancient land. Style is not the dress of thought, but the body of thought, and is active and energetic, according as the spirit that works beneath is active and energetic; and when monotony and dulness mark the style, and are commended by the critics of any age, it proves that the living spirit of thought is dull and disordered, and needeth to be roused from its lethargy. And the Lilliputian creatures who have caught it in its listless and sleepy mood will strive to pinion it down, dreading the resurrection of its might. But what of that? they are but Lilliputians who have bound it, and the cords with which they have bound it are but Lilliputian cords. I have been accused of affecting the antiquated manner of ages and times now forgotten. The writers of those times are too much forgotten, I lament, and their style of writing hath fallen much out of use; but the time is fast approaching when this stigma shall be wiped away from our prose, as it is fast departing from our poetry. I fear not to confess that Hooker, and Taylor, and Baxter, in theology, Bacon, Newton, and Locke, in philosophy, have been my companions, as Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Milton, have been in poetry. I cannot learn to think as they have done, which is the gift of God; but I can teach myself to think as disinterestedly, and to express as honestly what I think and feel. Which I have in the strength of God endeavoured to do. They are my models of men, of Englishmen, of authors. My conscience could find none so worthy, and the world hath acknowledged none worthier. They were the fountains of my English idiom, they taught me forms for expressing my feelings; they showed me the construction of sentences, and the majestic flow of continuous discourse. I perceived a sweetness in every thought, and a harmony in joining thought to thought; and through the whole there ran a strain of melodious feeling, which ravished the soul as vocal melody ravisheth the ear. Their books were to me like a concert of every sweet instrument of the soul, and heart, and strength, and mind. They seemed to think, and feel, and imagine, and reason all at once, and the result is to take the whole man captive in the chains of sweetest persuasion.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.1

A BURNING PRAIRIE.

(FROM "THE BIRDS OF AMERICA," PUBLISHED IN 1828.)

AFTER toiling for an hour, through a wide bottom of tall weeds and matted grass, I reached the grove-erected a small shed of boughs after the manner of the Indians, and lying down, was soon asleep, before a huge fire, which I built against the trunk of a fallen tree. I was awakened by the increasing violence of the gale. At times it sank into low wailings, and then would swell again, howling and whistling through the trees. After sitting by the fire for a short time, I again threw myself upon my pallet of dried grass, but could not sleep. There was something dismal and thrilling in the sound of the wind. At times, wild voices seemed shrieking through the woodland. It was in vain that I closed my eyes; a kind of superstitious feeling came over me, and, though I saw nothing, my ears drank in every sound. I gazed around in every direction, and sat with hand on my gun-trigger, for my feelings were so wrought up that I momentarily expected to see an armed Indian start from behind each bush. At last I rose up, and sat by the fire. Suddenly, a swift gust swept through the grove, and whirled off sparks and cinders in every direction. In an instant fifty little fires shot their forked tongues in the air, and seemed to flicker with a momentary struggle for existence. There was scarcely time to note their birth before they were creeping up in a tall tapering blaze, and leaping lightly along the tops of the scattered clumps of dry grass. In another moment they leaped forward into the prairie, and a waving line of brilliant flame quivered high up in the dark atmosphere.

my

Another gust came rushing along the ravine. It was announced by a distant moan; as it came nearer a cloud of dry leaves filled the air; the slender shrubs and saplings bent like weeds-dry branches snapped and crackled. The lofty forest trees writhed, and creaked, and groaned. The next

(1) Audubon-a native of America-has been much admired for his "written pictures of birds, so graceful, so clearly defined, and brilliantly coloured, that they are scarcely inferior to the productions of his pencil." "His powers of general description, too," adds the same critic (Griswold), "are also remarkable." No one who reads the above passage will be inclined to call this criticism in question.