Figure and ornament, therefore, are not interchangeable terms; the loftiest figurative style most conforms to the precepts of gravity and chastity.None the less there is a decorative use of figure, whereby a theme is enriched with imaginations and memories that are foreign to the main purpose.Under this head may be classed most of those allusions to the world's literature, especially to classical and Scriptural lore, which have played so considerable, yet on the whole so idle, a part in modern poetry.It is here that an inordinate love of decoration finds its opportunity and its snare.To keep the most elaborate comparison in harmony with its occasion, so that when it is completed it shall fall back easily into the emotional key of the narrative, has been the study of the great epic poets.Milton's description of the rebel legions adrift on the flaming sea is a fine instance of the difficulty felt and conquered:
Angel forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcases And broken chariot-wheels.So thick bestrown, Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change.
The comparison seems to wander away at random, obedient to the slightest touch of association.Yet in the end it is brought back, its majesty heightened, and a closer element of likeness introduced by the skilful turn that substitutes the image of the shattered Egyptian army for the former images of dead leaves and sea-weed.
The incidental pictures, of the roof of shades, of the watchers from the shore, and the very name "Red Sea," fortuitous as they may seem, all lend help to the imagination in bodying forth the scene described.An earlier figure in the same book of PARADISE LOST, because it exhibits a less conspicuous technical cunning, may even better show a poet's care for unity of tone and impression.Where Satan's prostrate bulk is compared to that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream, the picture that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat under the lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes the mind once more to all the pathos and gloom of those infernal deeps:
while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
So masterly a handling of the figures which usage and taste prescribe to learned writers is rare indeed.The ordinary small scholar disposes of his baggage less happily.Having heaped up knowledge as a successful tradesman heaps up money, he is apt to believe that his wealth makes him free of the company of letters, and a fellow craftsman of the poets.The mark of his style is an excessive and pretentious allusiveness.It was he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, SCIRE TUUM NIHIL EST NISI TE SCIREHOC SCIAT ALTER - "My knowledge of thy knowledge is the knowledge thou covetest." His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort from baffled ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially aimed, a foolish admiration.These tricks and vanities, the very corruption of ornament, will always be found while the power to acquire knowledge is more general than the strength to carry it or the skill to wield it.The collector has his proper work to do in the commonwealth of learning, but the ownership of a museum is a poor qualification for the name of artist.Knowledge has two good uses; it may be frankly communicated for the benefit of others, or it may minister matter to thought; an allusive writer often robs it of both these functions.He must needs display his possessions and his modesty at one and the same time, producing his treasures unasked, and huddling them in uncouth fashion past the gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not seem to make a rarity of them.The subject to be treated, the groundwork to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a profitless haphazard ostentation.This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a futile air of encyclopaedic grandeur.
Those who are repelled by this redundance of ornament, from which even great writers are not wholly exempt, have sometimes been driven by the force of reaction into a singular fallacy.The futility of these literary quirks and graces has induced them to lay art under the same interdict with ornament.Style and stylists, one will say, have no attraction for him, he had rather hear honest men utter their thoughts directly, clearly, and simply.
The choice of words, says another, and the conscious manipulation of sentences, is literary foppery; the word that first offers is commonly the best, and the order in which the thoughts occur is the order to be followed.Be natural, be straightforward, they urge, and what you have to say will say itself in the best possible manner.It is a welcome lesson, no doubt, that these deluded Arcadians teach.A simple and direct style - who would not give his all to purchase that! But is it in truth so easy to be compassed? The greatest writers, when they are at the top of happy hours, attain to it, now and again.Is all this tangled contrariety of things a kind of fairyland, and does the writer, alone among men, find that a beaten foot-path opens out before him as he goes, to lead him, straight through the maze, to the goal of his desires? To think so is to build a childish dream out of facts imperfectly observed, and worthy of a closer observation.
