How to Fail in Literature | Page 7

Andrew Lang
hint may be offered. Style may be good
in itself, but inappropriate to the subject. For example, style which may
be excellently adapted to a theological essay, may be but ill-suited for a
dialogue in a novel. There are subjects of which the poet says
Ornari res ipsa vetat, contenta doceri.
The matter declines to be adorned, and is content with being clearly
stated. I do not know what would occur if the writer of the Money
Article in the Times treated his topic with reckless gaiety. Probably that
number of the journal in which the essay appeared would have a large

sale, but the author might achieve professional failure; in the office. On
the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write about the Origins of
Religion in the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet
dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make
a blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a
jest, and Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois was called L'Esprit sur les Lois.
M. Renan's Histoire d'Israel may almost be called skittish. The French
are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. It is a digression,
but he who would fail can reach his end by not taking himself seriously.
If he gives himself no important airs, whether out of a freakish humour,
or real humility, depend upon it the public and the critics will take him
at something under his own estimate. On the other hand, by copying the
gravity of demeanour admired by Mr. Shandy in a celebrated parochial
animal, even a very dull person may succeed in winning no
inconsiderable reputation.
To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work in
hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay on Style,
Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth: {3}
"The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true
literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other arts, structure is
all important, felt or painfully missed, everywhere?--that architectural
conception of work, which foresees the end in the beginning, and never
loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of all the rest, till the last
sentence does but, with undiminished vigour, unfold and justify the
first--a condition of literary art, which, in contradistinction to another
quality of the artist himself, to be spoken of later, I shall call the
necessity of MIND in style."
These are words which the writer should have always present to his
memory, if he has something serious that he wants to say, or if he
wishes to express himself in the classic and perfect manner. But if it is
his fate merely to be obliged to say something, in the course of his
profession, or if he is bid to discourse for the pleasure of readers in the
Underground Railway, I fear he will often have to forget Mr. Pater. It
may not be literature, the writing of causeries, of Roundabout Papers,

of rambling articles "on a broomstick," and yet again, it MAY be
literature! "Parallel, allusion, the allusive way generally, the flowers in
the garden"--Mr. Pater charges heavily against these. The true artist
"knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to
which any DIVERSION, literally, is welcome, any vagrant intruder,
because one can go wandering away with it from the immediate
subject . . . In truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage,
from the last finish of the gem engraver blowing away the last particle
of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work to
be lying somewhere, according to Michel Angelo's fancy, in the
rough-hewn block of stone."
Excellent, but does this apply to every kind of literary art? What would
become of Montaigne if you blew away his allusions, and drove him
out of "the allusive way," where he gathers and binds so many flowers
from all the gardens and all the rose-hung lanes of literature?
Montaigne sets forth to write an Essay on Coaches. He begins with a
few remarks on seasickness in the common pig; some notes on the Pont
Neuf at Paris follow, and a theory of why tyrants are detested by men
whom they have obliged; a glance at Coaches is then given, next a
study of Montezuma's gardens, presently a brief account of the Spanish
cruelties in Mexico and Peru, last--retombons a nos coches--he tells a
tale of the Inca, and the devotion of his Guard: Another for Hector!
The allusive style has its proper place, like another, if it is used by the
right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also its higher
province. It would not do to employ either style in the wrong
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