At present I
content myself with these three propositions, which overthrow if you
can;--
1. That the merit, which justly you ascribe to Swift, is
_vernacularity_; he never forgets his mother-tongue in exotic forms,
unless we may call Irish exotic; for Hibernicisms he certainly has. This
merit, however, is exhibited--not, as _you_ fancy, in a graceful
artlessness, but in a coarse inartificiality. To be artless, and to be
inartificial, are very different things; as different as being natural and
being gross; as different as being simple and being homely.
2. That whatever, meantime, be the particular sort of excellence, or the
value of the excellence, in the style of Swift, he had it in common with
multitudes beside of that age. De Foe wrote a style for all the world the
same as to kind and degree of excellence, only pure from Hibernicisms. So
did every honest skipper [Dampier was something more] who had occasion to
record his voyages in this world of storms. So did many a hundred of
religious writers. And what wonder should there be in this, when the main
qualification for such a style was plain good sense, natural feeling,
unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting together the
clockwork of sentences, so as to avoid mechanical awkwardness of
construction, but above all the advantage of a _subject_, such in its
nature as instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should draw off
attention from itself? Such subjects are common; but grand impassioned
subjects insist upon a different treatment; and _there_ it is that
the true difficulties of style commence.
Pages:
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118