On the Art of Writing

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On the Art of Writing

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Title: On the Art of Writing Lectures delivered in the University of
Cambridge 1913-1914
Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch
Release Date: January 5, 2006 [EBook #17470]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ART OF WRITING ***

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ON THE ART OF WRITING

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C.F. CLAY, Manager London:
FETTER LANE, E.C. Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET.

Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: MACMILLAN & CO. LTD. Toronto:
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MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA.
Copyrighted in the United States of America by G.P. PUTNAM'S
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All rights reserved

ON THE ART OF WRITING
LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
1913-1914
BY
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A. Fellow of Jesus College
King Edward VII Professor of English Literature

Cambridge: at the University Press 1917
First Edition 1916 Reprinted 1916,1917

TO JOHN HAY LOBBAN

PREFACE
By recasting these lectures I might with pains have turned them into a
smooth treatise. But I prefer to leave them (bating a very few

corrections and additions) as they were delivered. If, as the reader will
all too easily detect, they abound no less in repetitions than in
arguments dropped and left at loose ends--the whole bewraying a man
called unexpectedly to a post where in the act of adapting himself, of
learning that he might teach, he had often to adjourn his main purpose
and skirmish with difficulties--they will be the truer to life; and so may
experimentally enforce their preaching, that the Art of Writing is a
living business.
Bearing this in mind, the reader will perhaps excuse certain small
vivacities, sallies that meet fools with their folly, masking the main
attack. That, we will see, is serious enough; and others will carry it on,
though my effort come to naught.
It amounts to this--Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but
an Art, to be practised. Great as is our own literature, we must consider
it as a legacy to be improved. Any nation that potters with any glory of
its past, as a thing dead and done for, is to that extent renegade. If that
be granted, not all our pride in a Shakespeare can excuse the relaxation
of an effort--however vain and hopeless--to better him, or some part of
him. If, with all our native exemplars to give us courage, we persist in
striving to write well, we can easily resign to other nations all the
secondary fame to be picked up by commentators.
Recent history has strengthened, with passion and scorn, the faith in
which I wrote the following pages.
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH November 1915

CONTENTS

LECTURE
I INAUGURAL

II THE PRACTICE OF WRITING
III ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE
IV ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE
V INTERLUDE: ON JARGON
VI ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE
VII SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED
VIII ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I)
IX ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II)
X ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I)
XI ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (II)
XII ON STYLE
INDEX

LECTURE I.
INAUGURAL
Wednesday, January 29, 1913
In all the long quarrel set between philosophy and poetry I know of
nothing finer, as of nothing more pathetically hopeless, than Plato's
return upon himself in his last dialogue 'The Laws.' There are who find
that dialogue (left unrevised) insufferably dull, as no doubt it is without
form and garrulous. But I think they will read it with a new tolerance,
may-be even with a touch of feeling, if upon second thoughts they
recognise in its twisting and turnings, its prolixities and repetitions, the
scruples of an old man who, knowing that his time in this world is short,

would not go out of it pretending to know more than he does, and even
in matters concerning which he was once very sure has come to divine
that, after all, as Renan says, 'La Verité consiste dans les nuances.'
Certainly 'the mind's dark cottage battered and decayed' does in that last
dialogue admit some wonderful flashes,
From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house Of Socrates,
or rather to that noble 'banquet-hall deserted' which aforetime had
entertained Socrates.
Suffer me, Mr Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my
text, to remind you of the