The Art of Writing | Page 2

and convey a definite
conventional import.
Now the first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or the
talk of a brilliant conversationalist, is the apt choice and contrast of the
words employed. It is, indeed, a strange art to take these blocks, rudely
conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar, and by tact of
application touch them to the finest meanings and distinctions, restore
to them their primal energy, wittily shift them to another issue, or make
of them a drum to rouse the passions. But though this form of merit is
without doubt the most sensible and seizing, it is far from being equally
present in all writers. The effect of words in Shakespeare, their singular
justice, significance, and poetic charm, is different, indeed, from the
effect of words in Addison or Fielding. Or, to take an example nearer
home, the words in Carlyle seem electrified into an energy of lineament,
like the faces of men furiously moved; whilst the words in Macaulay,
apt enough to convey his meaning, harmonious enough in sound, yet
glide from the memory like undistinguished elements in a general
effect. But the first class of writers have no monopoly of literary merit.
There is a sense in which Addison is superior to Carlyle; a sense in
which Cicero is better than Tacitus, in which Voltaire excels
Montaigne: it certainly lies not in the choice of words; it lies not in the
interest or value of the matter; it lies not in force of intellect, of poetry,
or of humour. The three first are but infants to the three second; and yet
each, in a particular point of literary art, excels his superior in the
whole. What is that point?
2. The Web.--Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the great
destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art
like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes: those arts,

like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or, as used to
be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and
the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative. Each class,
in right of this distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may claim a
common ground of existence, and it may be said with sufficient justice
that the motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern; a
pattern, it may be, of colours, of sounds, of changing attitudes,
geometrical figures, or imitative lines; but still a pattern. That is the
plane on which these sisters meet; it is by this that they are arts; and if
it be well they should at times forget their childish origin, addressing
their intelligence to virile tasks, and performing unconsciously that
necessary function of their life, to make a pattern, it is still imperative
that the pattern shall be made.
Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of
sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses.
Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be
carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature;
and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his
meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive
phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment
of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. In every properly
constructed sentence there should be observed this knot or hitch; so that
(however delicately) we are led to foresee, to expect, and then to
welcome the successive phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an
element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common figure of the
antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first
suggested and then deftly evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely
in itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the sentence
there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often
disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared,
and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance be too striking
and exact, for the one rule is to be infinitely various; to interest, to
disappoint, to surprise, and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it
were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness.
The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in beholding

him springs from this, that neither is for an instant overlooked or
sacrificed. So with the writer. His pattern, which is to please the
supersensual ear, is yet addressed, throughout and first of all, to the
demands of logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies
of the argument, the neatness of the