Green, and I have seen it recommended in Primers of
Literature
and
Manuals of Composition.
Manuals of Composition.
Tacitus
It is handed down, that Gordon was a
burly person, "large and corpulent. " It is believed, that he found his
way into "The Dunciad," and that he is immortalised there among the
"Canaille Écrivante;" the line
_Where Tindal dictates and Silenus snores_,
is taken to be Pope's description of him. Gordon died in 1750; at the
same time as Dr. Middleton, the elegant biographer of Cicero: Lord
Bolingbroke is said to have observed, when the news was told him, "Then
is the best writer in England gone, and the worst. " That Bolingbroke
should have disliked Gordon and his politics, does not surprise me; but
I cannot understand for what reason he, and other good judges, despised
his writings. "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors,"
Dr. Johnson says; and happy the people, I would assert, who have no
worse writers than Thomas Gordon. I wish to draw attention to Gordon's
correct vocabulary, to his bold and pregnant language, and to his
scholarly punctuation. Among our present writers, the art of punctuation
is a lost accomplishment; and it is usual now to find writings with
hardly anything but full stops; colons and semicolons are almost
obsolete; commas are neglected, or misused; and our slovenly pages are
strewn with dashes, the last resources of an untidy thinker, the certain
witnesses to a careless and unfinished sentence. How different, and
how superior, is the way of Gordon; who, though he can be homely and
familiar, never lays aside the well-bred and courteous manners of a
polished Age. In his writings, the leading clauses of a sentence are
distinguished by their colons: the minor clauses, by their semicolons;
the nice meaning of the details is expressed, the pleasure and the
convenience of his readers are alike increased, by his right and elegant
use of commas. The comma, with us, is used as a loop or bracket, and
for little else: by the more accurate scholars of the last Age, it
was employed to indicate a finer meaning; to mark an emphasis, or an
elision; to introduce a relative clause; to bring out the value of an
happy phrase, or the nice precision of an epithet. And thus the authors
of the great century of prose, that orderly and spacious time, assembled
their words, arranged their sentences, and marshalled them into careful
periods: without any loss to the subtile meaning of their thought,
or any sacrifice of vigour, they exposed their subject in a dignified
procession of stately paragraphs; and when the end is reached we look
back upon a perfect specimen of the writer's art. We have grown careless
about form, we have little sense for balance and proportion, and we
have sacrificed the good manners of literature to an ill-bred liking
for haste and noise: it has been decided, that the old way of writing
is cumbersome and slow; as well might some guerilla chieftain have
announced to his fellow-barbarians, that Caesar's legions were not swift
and beautiful in their manoeuvres, nor irresistible in their advance. I
have spoken of our long sentences, with nothing but full stops: they
are variegated, here and there, with shorter sentences, sometimes of two
words; this way of writing is common in Macaulay or in the histories of
Mr.
Green, and I have seen it recommended in Primers of Literature and
Manuals of Composition. With the jolting and unconnected fragments of
these authorities, I would contrast the musical and flowing periods of
Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets": to study these works in solitude,
will probably be sufficient to justify my preference; but to hear them
read aloud, should convert the most unwilling listener into an advocate
of my opinion.
Dr. Birkbeck Hill, in the delightful Preface to his Boswell, explains
how he was turned by a happy chance to the study of the literature of
the eighteenth century; and how he read on and on in the enchanting
pages of "The Spectator. " "From Addison in the course of time I passed
on," he continues, "to the other great writers of his and the succeeding
age, finding in their exquisitely clear style, their admirable
common-sense, and their freedom from all the tricks of affectation, a
delightful contrast to so many of the eminent authors of our own time. "
These words might be used of Gordon: I do not claim for him the style of
Addison, nor the accomplished negligence of Goldsmith; these are graces
beyond the reach of art; but he exhibits the common-sense, and the clear
style, of the eighteenth century. Like all the good writers of his time,
he is unaffected and "simplex munditiis"; he has the better qualities
of Pyrrha, and is "plain in his neatness. " In Mr. Ward's edition of the
English Poets, there may be read side by side a notice of Collins and of
Gray; the one by Mr. Swinburne, the other by Mr. Matthew Arnold: I
make no allusion here to the greatness of either poet, to the merits of
either style, nor to the value of either criticism. But the essay upon
Gray is quiet in tone; it has an unity of treatment, and never deserts
the principal subject; it is suffused with light, and full of the
most delicate allusions: the essay on Collins, by being written in
superlatives and vague similes, deafens and perplexes the reader; and
the author, by squandering his resources, has no power to make fine
distinctions, nor to exalt one part of his thesis above another. These
two performances illustrate the last quality in Gordon, and in the old
writers, to which I shall draw attention: they were always restrained
in their utterances, and therefore they could be discriminating in
their judgments; they could be emphatic without noise, and deep without
obscurity, ornamental but not vulgar, carefully arranged but not stiff
or artificial. They exhibit the three indispensable gifts of the
finest authorship: "simplicitas munditiis," "lucidus ordo," "curiosa
felicitas. "
In this volume, Gordon's punctuation has been generally followed: his
orthography has been modernised a little, though not by my hands,
nor with my consent; and I have observed without regret, that some of
Gordon's original spellings have eluded the vigilance of the printer:
that stern official would by no means listen to my entreaties for the
long "SS," the turn-over words, or the bounteous capitals, which add so
much to the seductive and sober dignity of an eighteenth-century page;
but, on the whole, we have given a tolerable reproduction of Gordon's
folio.
burly person, "large and corpulent. " It is believed, that he found his
way into "The Dunciad," and that he is immortalised there among the
"Canaille Écrivante;" the line
_Where Tindal dictates and Silenus snores_,
is taken to be Pope's description of him. Gordon died in 1750; at the
same time as Dr. Middleton, the elegant biographer of Cicero: Lord
Bolingbroke is said to have observed, when the news was told him, "Then
is the best writer in England gone, and the worst. " That Bolingbroke
should have disliked Gordon and his politics, does not surprise me; but
I cannot understand for what reason he, and other good judges, despised
his writings. "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors,"
Dr. Johnson says; and happy the people, I would assert, who have no
worse writers than Thomas Gordon. I wish to draw attention to Gordon's
correct vocabulary, to his bold and pregnant language, and to his
scholarly punctuation. Among our present writers, the art of punctuation
is a lost accomplishment; and it is usual now to find writings with
hardly anything but full stops; colons and semicolons are almost
obsolete; commas are neglected, or misused; and our slovenly pages are
strewn with dashes, the last resources of an untidy thinker, the certain
witnesses to a careless and unfinished sentence. How different, and
how superior, is the way of Gordon; who, though he can be homely and
familiar, never lays aside the well-bred and courteous manners of a
polished Age. In his writings, the leading clauses of a sentence are
distinguished by their colons: the minor clauses, by their semicolons;
the nice meaning of the details is expressed, the pleasure and the
convenience of his readers are alike increased, by his right and elegant
use of commas. The comma, with us, is used as a loop or bracket, and
for little else: by the more accurate scholars of the last Age, it
was employed to indicate a finer meaning; to mark an emphasis, or an
elision; to introduce a relative clause; to bring out the value of an
happy phrase, or the nice precision of an epithet. And thus the authors
of the great century of prose, that orderly and spacious time, assembled
their words, arranged their sentences, and marshalled them into careful
periods: without any loss to the subtile meaning of their thought,
or any sacrifice of vigour, they exposed their subject in a dignified
procession of stately paragraphs; and when the end is reached we look
back upon a perfect specimen of the writer's art. We have grown careless
about form, we have little sense for balance and proportion, and we
have sacrificed the good manners of literature to an ill-bred liking
for haste and noise: it has been decided, that the old way of writing
is cumbersome and slow; as well might some guerilla chieftain have
announced to his fellow-barbarians, that Caesar's legions were not swift
and beautiful in their manoeuvres, nor irresistible in their advance. I
have spoken of our long sentences, with nothing but full stops: they
are variegated, here and there, with shorter sentences, sometimes of two
words; this way of writing is common in Macaulay or in the histories of
Mr.
Green, and I have seen it recommended in Primers of Literature and
Manuals of Composition. With the jolting and unconnected fragments of
these authorities, I would contrast the musical and flowing periods of
Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets": to study these works in solitude,
will probably be sufficient to justify my preference; but to hear them
read aloud, should convert the most unwilling listener into an advocate
of my opinion.
Dr. Birkbeck Hill, in the delightful Preface to his Boswell, explains
how he was turned by a happy chance to the study of the literature of
the eighteenth century; and how he read on and on in the enchanting
pages of "The Spectator. " "From Addison in the course of time I passed
on," he continues, "to the other great writers of his and the succeeding
age, finding in their exquisitely clear style, their admirable
common-sense, and their freedom from all the tricks of affectation, a
delightful contrast to so many of the eminent authors of our own time. "
These words might be used of Gordon: I do not claim for him the style of
Addison, nor the accomplished negligence of Goldsmith; these are graces
beyond the reach of art; but he exhibits the common-sense, and the clear
style, of the eighteenth century. Like all the good writers of his time,
he is unaffected and "simplex munditiis"; he has the better qualities
of Pyrrha, and is "plain in his neatness. " In Mr. Ward's edition of the
English Poets, there may be read side by side a notice of Collins and of
Gray; the one by Mr. Swinburne, the other by Mr. Matthew Arnold: I
make no allusion here to the greatness of either poet, to the merits of
either style, nor to the value of either criticism. But the essay upon
Gray is quiet in tone; it has an unity of treatment, and never deserts
the principal subject; it is suffused with light, and full of the
most delicate allusions: the essay on Collins, by being written in
superlatives and vague similes, deafens and perplexes the reader; and
the author, by squandering his resources, has no power to make fine
distinctions, nor to exalt one part of his thesis above another. These
two performances illustrate the last quality in Gordon, and in the old
writers, to which I shall draw attention: they were always restrained
in their utterances, and therefore they could be discriminating in
their judgments; they could be emphatic without noise, and deep without
obscurity, ornamental but not vulgar, carefully arranged but not stiff
or artificial. They exhibit the three indispensable gifts of the
finest authorship: "simplicitas munditiis," "lucidus ordo," "curiosa
felicitas. "
In this volume, Gordon's punctuation has been generally followed: his
orthography has been modernised a little, though not by my hands,
nor with my consent; and I have observed without regret, that some of
Gordon's original spellings have eluded the vigilance of the printer:
that stern official would by no means listen to my entreaties for the
long "SS," the turn-over words, or the bounteous capitals, which add so
much to the seductive and sober dignity of an eighteenth-century page;
but, on the whole, we have given a tolerable reproduction of Gordon's
folio.
