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INTRODUCTION

THE selections contained in this the concluding volume of the present series, extend from the beginning of the century to our own day. We are tempted, in comparing these two periods, to be misled by the analogy of the rapid changes which the century has seen in other spheres, and to seek for a wide contrast between English prose as it was written at the beginning and as it is written at the close of the nineteenth century. But, as a fact, the analogy is not real: and it would be more true to say that no equal number of years has shown so few, rather than so many marked changes in prose style. In most of its essential features, English prose is the same now as it was when the eighteenth century closed and we might read sentences, paragraphs, and even pages from many books written at the beginning and at the end of the period covered by this volume without finding any marked distinction which would help us to decide to which part of it they belong. But on the other hand, we may safely say that there is no equal period which presents anything like the same individual variety, or which has turned and twisted the models of the past into as great a multiplicity of shapes, according to the endless eccentricities either of fashion or of taste; partly also, it is only fair to admit, in compliance with the exigencies of a boundless complexity of subject matter. It is just these two, apparently opposite characteristics, which make it so hard to pronounce a definite judgment upon the main tendencies of English prose in our day. It is comparatively easy to trace the progress of a marked and decisive change of taste or fashion, which moves forward by well-defined stages, compels obedience to its successive developments, and which presents itself finally E

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in sharp contrast to its earliest phase. It is much more difficult, through a maze of bewildering variety amongst contemporary writings, to grasp any single law which regulates changes which are only slowly revealing themselves, and the ultimate tendencies of which we can at best only guess.

The prose of the eighteenth century at its best had been marked by a certain stateliness which combined with its formal severity, and perhaps in great measure owed to that formal severity a simple lucidity, which was its chief ornament. It is a common fallacy to believe that simplicity is always due to nature; it is quite as often due to the highest art. The eighteenth century had certainly lost, and lost beyond recall, the naïveté and freshness which had been the hall-mark of Elizabethan prose. But it had inherited from the seventeenth century an earnestness and directness which was the chief merit of that age, but which had been nothing but a spasmodic force until it had undergone the chastening discipline of taste and harmony. Such discipline the eighteenth century had brought and, shaking off the uncouthness of pedantry and conceit, had graced English prose with something of the facile ease and natural flow of courtly and polished conversation. The language was recovering, after long and tortuous wanderings, the directness and lucidity which were amongst the best of its inherent traits; but the most that could now be hoped for was that the directness and lucidity should be the product of art and not of nature. What Johnson did for English prose was to establish such lucidity on the solid basis of fixed and logical rule, which made slipshod inaccuracy and vague ambiguity crimes to be arraigned before a tribunal that would give them short shrift. How consistent such rule was with eloquence, with simplicity, with matchless force, Johnson himself showed and it was not his fault if feebler brains mistook his aims, and feebler hands first parodied and then perverted the model he had set them. That common form of intellectual perversity which thinks that it has sufficiently marked the place of Johnson in prose style by calling him turgid and sesquipedalian, inevitably leads its victims into a parody of his formality which lacks the faintest reflection of his virility and force.

Before the eighteenth century had passed, the tradition of stateliness had waned: and a degraded taste had preserved the formality as a tradition which served to mark what was held to be a literary manner and style. They seemed to have forgotten the

very memory of the lucid simplicity and critical accuracy that had been its saving grace. To dabble in literature became unfortunately a fashion which was supposed to indicate a certain amount of cultivation. It was held to be a graceful accomplishment for the man of the world: and with increasing frequency it even became a calling and an occupation, pursued for profit; and while some of the best, with perhaps heedless superciliousness, disdained its overt pursuit, its ranks were crowded with those who reckoned it a distinction to have written what found its way into print. With such a class, a certain superficial formality which follows some fashion or tradition, was almost a necessity. They were bound either to write in obedience to such a fashion or not to write at all. Most of all was this modish pedantry essential in the days when journalism and the literature of periodicals became a regular occupation of an increasing number. The journalist almost necessarily falls into a certain mannerism: he could not perform his daily task if he did not. It is only when a man lives with his subject and has made it his own, that he can speak a language of his own; and he is happy, if in such a case he belongs to the chosen circle who can use that language with ease and freedom, and yet who never err against the rules prescribed by the genius of their native tongue.

In the earliest years of our century, all the influences which were most harmful were most rife. The best elements of eighteenth-century prose were gone, and only the worthless husks of a certain formal literary tradition were left. A new host were rushing into literature, who wished to pose as men of culture, and therefore thought it necessary above all things to make their writing something distinct from their ordinary conversation-so as to satisfy themselves and others that it was literature. Journalism and periodical writing were becoming more widely spread, but, not yet having acquired the strength of experience which could hammer out a style of their own, were content to allow a stilted pedantry to pose for literary dignity.

But the evil of this habit told upon more than merely its baser instruments. Never did disintegration proceed more rapidly than in the quarter of a century that followed Johnson's death. The formalism became an accepted fashion, which to a certain extent influenced even such as Scott, and did its best to disfigure the masterpieces of his genius. It is true that in his case the effect is but slight, and that defects of style are scarcely more