CHAPTER II.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD
ESSAY?
Prose has a bad name. We think of it and
speak of it as including
everything in language that is _not_
poetry. In former times art
in literature meant poetry,--or, at a
stretch, it included in addition
only oratory.
The beginning of art in the use of
_unmeasured_ language (if we
may use that term to designate language
that does not have the metrical
form) was undoubtedly oratory,--the
impassioned appeal of a speaker to
his fellow men. The language was
rhythmical, but not measured, that
is, not susceptible of division into lines,
corresponding to bars of
music; and the element of beauty was
distinctly subordinate to the
elements of nobility and truth. In modern
times poetry has come to be
more and more the mere aggregation of
images of beauty, without much
reference to the intellectual, and still
less to the ethical; and prose
has been the recognized medium for the
intellectual and the moral.
Of course, modern times have not given us
any oratory superior to
that of Demosthenes and Cicero; nor any
plain statement of historical
fact superior to that of Herodotus,
Thucydides, or Tacitus. But art
in conversational prose, reduced to writing
and made literature,
may fairly be said to date from the
essayists of Queen Anne’s
time--Addison, Swift, Goldsmith, and their
fellows; and it was brought
to perfection by Lamb, De Quincey,
Macaulay, Thackeray, Irving, and
others of their day.
In most of this prose we find a new
element--humour. The original,
characteristic, typical essay is whimsical,
sympathetic, kindly,
amusing, suggestive, and close to reality.
The impassioned appeal of
oratory has been adapted to the
requirements of reading prose by such
writers as De Quincey and Macaulay; but the
humorous essay has been by
far the more popular.
And what is humour? It would be hard to say
that it is either beauty,
nobility, or truth. The fact is poetry,
with its lofty atmosphere,
rarefied, artificial, and emotional, is in
danger of becoming morbid,
unhealthy, and impractical. Humour is the
sanitary sea salt that
purifies and saves. No one with a sense of
humour can get very far
away from elemental and obvious facts.
Humour is the corrective,
the freshener, the health-giver. Its danger
is the trivial, the
commonplace, and the inconsequent.
The primary object of prose is to represent
the truth, but in so far
as prose is true literature, it must make
its appeal to the emotions.
The humorous essay must make us feel
healthier and more sprightly,
the impassioned oratorical picture must
fire us with desires and
inspire us with courage of a practical and
specific kind. Mere
logical demonstration, or argumentative
appeal, are not in themselves
literature because their appeal is not
emotional, and so not a part
of the vibrating electric fluid of
humanity; and beauty plays the
subordinate part of furnishing suggestive
and illustrative images for
the illumination of what is called “the
style.”
Gradually prose has absorbed all the powers
and useful qualities of
poetry not inconsistent with its practical
and unartificial character.
So the characteristics of a good prose
style are in many respects not
unlike the characteristics of a good poetic
style.
First, good prose should be rhythmical and
musical, though never
measured. As prose is never to be sung, the
artificial characteristics
of music should never be present in any
degree; but as poetry in its
more highly developed forms has lost its
qualities of simple melody
and attained characteristics of a more
beautiful harmony, so prose,
starting with mere absence of roughness and
harshness of sound,
gradually has attained to something very
near akin to the musical
harmony of the more refined poetry. Almost
the only difference lies
in the presence or absence of measure; but
this forms a clear dividing
line between poetry (reaching down from
above) and prose (rising up
from below).
Second, the more suggestive prose is, the
better it is. It is true
that images should not be used merely for
their own sake, as they may
be in poetry; but their possibilities in
the way of illustration and
illumination is infinite, and it is this
office that they perform in
the highest forms of poetry. To paraphrase
Browning, it enables the
genius to express “thoughts hardly to be
packed into a narrow” word.
And so that whole side of life that cannot
possibly be expressed in
the definite formulæ of science finds its
body and incarnation in
literature.
Third, good prose will never be very far
from easily perceived facts
and realities of life. The saving salt of
humour will prevent wandering
very far; and this same humour will make
reading easier, and will
induce that relaxation of labour-strained
faculties which alone permits
the exercise and enjoyment of our higher
powers. We shall never get
into heaven if we are forever working, and
humour causes us to cease
work and lie free and open for the
inspiration from above.
It would be hard to find either nobility,
truth, or beauty as
distinguishing characteristics in the
following letter of Charles
Lamb’s; but it is certain that it is
admirable prose. If it does not
give us that which we seek, it most
certainly puts us into the mood in
which we are most likely to find it in
other and loftier writers:
“March 9, 1822.
“Dear Coleridge--It gives me great
satisfaction to hear that the pig
turned out so well: they are interesting
creatures at a certain age.
What a pity that such buds should blow out
into the maturity of rank
bacon! You had all some of the crackling
and brain sauce. Did you
remember to rub it with butter, and gently
dredge it a little, just
before the crisis? Did the eyes come away
kindly, with no Œdipean
avulsion? Was the crackling the colour of
ripe pomegranate? Had you no
complement of boiled neck of mutton before
it, to blunt the edge of
delicate desire. Did you flesh maiden teeth
in it?
“Not that I sent the pig, or can form the
remotest guess what part Owen
could play in the business. I never knew
him give anything away in his
life. He would not begin with strangers. I
suspect the pig after all
was meant for me; but at the unlucky
juncture of time being absent,
the present somehow went round to Highgate.
To confess an honest
truth, a pig is one of those things I could
never think of sending
away. Teal, widgeons, snipes, barn-door
fowls, ducks, geese--your tame
villatic things--Welsh mutton, collars of
brawn, sturgeon, fresh or
pickled; your potted char, Swiss cheeses,
French pies, early grapes,
muscadines, I impart as freely unto my
friends as to myself. They are
but self-extended; but pardon me if I stop
somewhere. Where the fine
feeling of benevolence giveth a higher
smack than the sensual rarity,
there my friends (or any good man) may
command me; but pigs are pigs,
and I myself therein am nearest to myself.
Nay, I should think it an
affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who
bestowed such a boon upon
me, if in a churlish mood I parted with the
precious gift. One of the
bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was
when a child--when my kind
old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to
bestow a sixpenny whole
plum-cake upon me. In my way home through
the Borough I met a venerable
old man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts;
a look-beggar, not a verbal
petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught
charity, I gave away the
cake to him. I walked on a little in all
the pride of an Evangelical
peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt’s
kindness crossed me; the sum it
was to her; the pleasure that she had a
right to expect that I--not the
old impostor--should take in eating her
cake--the ingratitude by which,
under the colour of a Christian virtue, I
had frustrated her cherished
purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to
heart so grievously, that I
think I never suffered the like; and I was
right. It was a piece of
unfeeling hypocrisy, and it proved a lesson
to me ever after. The cake
has long been masticated, consigned to the
dunghill with the ashes of
that unseasonable pauper.
“But when Providence, who is better to us
all than our aunts, gives me
a pig, remembering my temptation and my
fall, I shall endeavour to act
towards it more in the spirit of the
donor’s purpose.
“Yours (short of pig) to command in
everything,
C. L.”
When we have finished reading this, we
wonder if we have not mistaken
our standards of life; if the senses are
not as truly divine as our
dreams, and certainly far more within the
reach of our realization.
We think, we feel happy, we are certainly
no worse. Whatever strange
thing this humour may have done to us, we
are more truly _men_ for
having experienced it.
And it is this that prose can do that
poetry, even of the best, can
never accomplish.
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