Nay, and this wit, so
little recognised, is the necessary organ of that philosophy which
we so much admire. That style is therefore the most perfect, not,
as fools say, which is the most natural, for the most natural is
the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which attains the
highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively;
or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigour.
Even the derangement of the phrases from their (so-called) natural
order is luminous for the mind; and it is by the means of such
designed reversal that the elements of a judgment may be most
pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action most
perspicuously bound into one.
The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and logical,
an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the
foundation of the art of literature. Books indeed continue to be
read, for the interest of the fact or fable, in which this quality
is poorly represented, but still it will be there. And, on the
other hand, how many do we continue to peruse and reperuse with
pleasure whose only merit is the elegance of texture? I am tempted
to mention Cicero; and since Mr. Anthony Trollope is dead, I will.
It is a poor diet for the mind, a very colourless and toothless
'criticism of life'; but we enjoy the pleasure of a most intricate
and dexterous pattern, every stitch a model at once of elegance and
of good sense; and the two oranges, even if one of them be rotten,
kept dancing with inimitable grace.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25