1705043090 Find out men’s wants and wills,

1705043091

1705043092 And meet them there

1705043093

1705043094 As I write, I must unceasingly study what is the line of least intellectual resistance along which my thought may enter the differently constituted mind; and to that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling, my meaning. Will this combination of words or that make the meaning clear? Will this order of presentation facilitate swiftness of apprehension, or will it clog the movement? What temperamental perversities in me must be set aside in order to render my reader’s approach to what I would tell him pleasant? What temperamental perversities in him are to be accepted by me as fixed facts, conditioning all I say? These are the questions the skilful writer is always asking.

1705043095

1705043096 And these questions, as will have been perceived already, are moral questions no less than literary. That golden rule of generous service by which we do for others what we would have them do for us, is a rule of writing too. Every writer who knows his trade perceives that he is a servant; that it is his business to endure hardships if only his reader may win freedom from toil, that no impediment to that reader’s understanding is too slight to deserve diligent attention, that he has consequently no right to let a single sentence slip from him unsocialized—I mean, a sentence which cannot become as naturally another’s possession as his own. In the very act of asserting himself he lays aside what is distinctively his. And because these qualifications of the writer are moral qualifications, they can never be completely fulfilled so long as we live and write. We may continually approximate them more nearly, but there will still always be possible an alluring refinement of exercise beyond. The world of the literary artist and the moral man is interesting through its inexhaustibility;and he who serves his fellows by writing or by speech is artist and moral man in one. Writing a letter is a simple matter but it is a moral matter and an artistic; for it may be done either with imagination or with raw self-centerdness. What things will my correspondent wish to know? How can I transport him out of his properly alien surroundings into the vivid impressions which now are mine? How can I tell what I long to tell and still be sure the telling will be for him as lucid and delightful as for me? Remember the other person, I say. Do not become absorbed in yourself. Your interests cover only the half of any piece of writing; the other man’s less visible half is necessary to complete yours. And if I have here discussed writing more than speech, that is merely because when we speak we utter our first thoughts, but when we write, our second, or better still, our fourth; and in the greater deliberation which writing affords I have felt that the demands of morality and art, which are universally imbedded in language, could be more distinctly perceived. Yet none the less truly do we need to talk for the other person than to write for him.

1705043097

1705043098 But there remains a fourth weighty precept, and one not altogether detachable from the third. It is this: “Lean upon your subject.” We have seen how the user of language, whether in writing or speaking, works for himself, how he works for another individual too; but there is one more for whom his work is performed, one of greater consequence than any person, and that is his subject. From this comes his primary call. Those who in their utterance fix their thoughts on themselves, or on other selves, never reach power. That resides in the subject. There we must dwell with it, and be content to have no other strength than its. When the frightened schoolboy sits down to write about Spring, he cannot imagine where the thoughts which are to make up his piece are to come from. He cudgels his brains for ideas. He examines his pen point, the curtains, his inkstand, to see if perhaps ideas may not be had from these. He wonders what his teacher will wish him to say, and he tries to recall how the passage sounded in the “Third Reader.” In every direction but one he turns, and that is the direction where lies the prime mover of his toil, his subject. Of that he is afraid. Now, what I want to make evident is that his subject is not in reality his foe, but his friend. It is his only helper. His composition is not to be, as he seems to suppose, a mass of his laborious inventions but it is to be made up exclusively of what the subject dictates. He has only to attend. At present he stands in his own way, making such a din with his private anxieties that he cannot hear the rich suggestions of the subject. He is bothered with considering how he feels, or what he or somebody else will like to see on his paper. This is debilitating business. He must lean on his subject, if he would have his writing strong, and busy himself with what it says, rather than with what he would say. Matthew Arnold, in the important preface to his poems of 1853, contrasting the artistic methods of Greek poetry and modern poetry, sums up the teaching of the Greeks in these words: “All depends upon the subject;choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations; this done, everything else will follow.” And he calls attention to the self-assertive and scatter-brained habits of our time. “How different a way of thinking from this is ours! We can hardly at the present day understand what Menander meant, when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along. I verily think that the majority of us do not in our heart believe that there is such a thing as a total impression to be derived from a poem, or to be demanded from a poet. We permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies us with occasional bursts of fine writing and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images.” Great writers put themselves and their personal imaginings out of sight. Their writing becomes a kind of transparent window on which reality is reflected, and through which people see, not them, but that of which they write. How much we know of Shakespeare’s characters! How little of Shakespeare! Of him that might almost be said which Isaiah said of God, “He hideth himself.” The best writer is the best mental listener, the one who peers fartherest into his matter and most fully heeds its behests. Preëminently obedient is the strong writer, —refinedly, energetically obedient. I once spent a day with a great novelist when the book which subsequently proved his masterpiece was only half written. I praised his mighty hero, but said I should think the life of an author would be miserable who, having created a character so huge, now had him in hand and must find something for him to do. My friend seemed puzzled by my remark, but after a moment’s pause said, “I don’t think you know how we work. I have nothing to do with the character. Now that he is created, he will act as he will.”

1705043099

1705043100 And such docility must be cultivated by everyone who would write well, such strenuous docility. Of course there must be energy in plenty; the imagination which I described in my third section, the passion for solid form as in my second, the disciplined and daring powers as in my first; but all these must be ready at a moment’s notice to move where the matter calls and to acknowledge that all their worth is to be drawn from it. Religion is only enlarged good sense, and the words of Jesus apply as well to the things of earth as of heaven. I do not know where we could find a more compendious statement of what is most important for one to learn who would cultivate himself in English than the simple saying in which Jesus announces the source of his power, “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.” Whoever can use such words will be a noble speaker indeed.

1705043101

1705043102 These, then, are the fundamental precepts which everyone must heed who would command our beautiful English language. There is, of course, a fifth. I hardly need to name it, for it always follows after, whatever others precede. It is that we should do the work, and not think about it; do it day by day and not grow weary in bad doing. Early and often we must be busy, and be satisfied to have a great deal of labor produce but a small result. I am told that early in life John Morley, wishing to engage in journalism, wrote an editorial and sent it to a paper every day for nearly a year before he succeeded in getting one accepted. We all know what a power he became in London journalism. I will not vouch for the truth of the story, but I am sure an ambitious author is wise who writes a weekly essay for his stove. Publication is of little consequence, so long as one is getting oneself hammered into shape.

1705043103

1705043104 But before I close this address, let me acknowledge that in it I have neglected a whole class of helpful influences, probably quite as important as any I have discussed. Purposely I have passed them by. Because I wished to show what we can do for ourselves, I have everywhere assumed that our cultivation in English is to be effected by naked volition and a kind of dead lift. These are mighty agencies, but seldom in this interlocked world do they work well alone. They are strongest when backed by social suggestion and unconscious custom. Ordinarily the good speaker is he who keeps good company, but increases the helpful influence of that company by constant watchfulness along the lines I have marked out. So supplemented, my teaching is true. By itself it is not true. It needs the supplementation of others. Let him who would speak or write well seek out good speakers and writers. Let him live in their society, —for the society of the greatest writers is open to the most secluded, —let him feel the ease of their excellence, the ingenuity, grace, and scope of their diction, and he will soon find in himself capacities whose development may be aided by the precepts I have given. Most of us catch better than we learn. We take up unconsciously from our surroundings what we cannot altogether create. All this should be remembered, and we should keep ourselves exposed to the wholesome words of our fellow-men. Yet our own exertions will not on that account be rendered less important. We may largely choose the influences to which we submit; we may exercise a selective attention among these influences; we may enjoy, oppose, modify, or diligently ingraft what is conveyed to us, —and for doing any one of these things rationally we must be guided by some clear aim. Such aims, altogether essential even if subsidiary, I have sought to supply; and I would reiterate that he who holds them fast may become superior to linguistic fortune and be the wise director of his sluggish and obstinate tongue. It is as certain as anything can be that faithful endeavor will bring expertness in the use of English. If we are watchful of our speech, making our words continually more minutely true, free, and resourceful; if we look upon our occasions of writing as opportunities for the deliberate work of unified construction;if in all our utterances we think of him who hears as well as of him who speaks; and above all, if we fix the attention of ourselves and our hearers on the matter we talk about and so let ourselves be supported by our subject, —we shall make a daily advance not only in English study, but in personal power, in general serviceableness, and in consequent delight.

1705043105

1705043106 Notes

1705043107

1705043108 philology, the scientific study of languages and their structure and mutual relation.

1705043109

1705043110 intricacies, complexities, involved problems; things difficult to understand.

1705043111

1705043112 these airy products, words and sentences.

1705043113

1705043114 myriad, innumerable; many.

1705043115

1705043116 cogent, convincing; forcible.

1705043117

1705043118 from the times of the Saxons to those of Tennyson and Kipling, from the 7th century to the present day.

1705043119

1705043120 fragmentarily, in fragments or parts.

1705043121

1705043122 exhilaration, gaiety; high spirits; enlivenment.

1705043123

1705043124 nutriment, refreshment; food.

1705043125

1705043126 veritable, actual; true; genuine.

1705043127

1705043128 whose intimacy, close contact or association with whom.

1705043129

1705043130 emboldens, encourages.

1705043131

1705043132 tedium, irksomeness; weariness.

1705043133

1705043134 vagrancy, state of being a wanderer.

1705043135

1705043136 human faculties, powers of sense or mind of human beings; their ability to act.

1705043137

1705043138 maimed, crippled; disabled.

1705043139

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