CHAPTER IV.

OF NATURALNESS IN STYLE.

§ 301. NATURALNESS is a property which appears in style so far as it represents the particular state of the speaker's mind at the time of speaking.

The other two subjective properties of style are general, being founded on the nature of thought. Naturalness is founded on the peculiar mental condition of the individual speaker.

Every one has his own modes of thinking. He has his own modes of viewing truth. His feelings have their own peculiar characteristics. The same ideas, even, passing through two different minds, or through the same mind at different times and in different circumstances, become to a considerable degree modified in their character.

Every one has, also, his own manner of expression. His range of words is peculiar. The structure of his sentences is peculiar. His forms of illustration, his images are peculiar.

ner.

Every writer and every speaker, thus, has his own manOne is more diffuse, another more concise; one more lean and jejune, another more copious and luxuriant; one is more florid, another more plain; one more dry, another more rich and succulent; one more nervous or vehement, another more feeble or tame; one more neat and elegant, another more careless and loose; one more elevated and stately, another more familiar and free. The speaker's own manner best becomes him. While he is careful to avoid positive faults, and particularly those of excess, to vary and

enrich with all the various excellences that can be admitted into his style, he should still preserve his own manner, as scarcely any thing is more offensive than a strained, affected, unnatural style of expression. For the purpose of forming a style, it may be safe to select a model and strive to imitate. This may, indeed, be recommended within certain limits and in strict subjection to certain principles. Even here, however, the better course is to study the different elements of expression or properties of style, and exercise on those especially in which there is consciousness of deficiency, using other writers or speakers remarkable for those properties rather as exemplifications than as models for imitation. But when actually engaging in the work of conveying thought and feeling to others, the speaker or writer should banish from his mind all thought of this or that style or manner, and allow a free, spontaneous expression to his thoughts. Reason must, indeed, preside over all discourse. But its influence in securing rational discourse should be exerted rather in determining and shaping the mental habits, and thus impressing its high character on every exertion of the mind while the life and beauty of spontaneous action is still preserved. This is, indeed, the end and object of all true intellectual discipline. Excessive care, at the time of constructing discourse, to preserve from every thing faulty, may be injurious. In writing, at least, it is better to write freely and correct afterward. In training, this freedom can be secured only by confining the study and practice to specific elements and processes. Each should be practiced by itself, till it shall be fully mastered and so cause no distraction in subsequent practical efforts.

§ 302. Naturalness in style respects the person, the official character and standing of the speaker, and the subject and occasion of his discourse.

§ 303. The personal characteristics of style are determined either more directly by the habits of thought,

however formed, peculiar to the individual speaker, or more indirectly by his physical habits.

There is a singular beauty in that style which is the free and unforced expression of the speaker's own thoughts, with all their peculiar characteristics. It must yet be ever borne in mind that low thoughts and low imagery, even although expressed naturally, must necessarily be offensive. It cannot therefore be too earnestly enjoined on the mind that is forming its habits and character to shun with the utmost care every thing that can vitiate its taste, debase its sentiments, or corrupt the verbal and sensible material in which its thoughts are to embody themselves; and to cultivate assiduously, on the other hand, familiarity with all that is pure and ennobling in thought and sentiment, and all that is lovely and beautiful in language and in the various kinds of sensible imagery employed in expression. Both of these objects should be kept distinctly in view, namely, the purity and elevation of the thought itself, and the material which is used for embodying thought. Every man has, in an important sense, a language of his own. Both the range of words, and the sensible objects and scenes, as well as all the various means of communicating and illustrating thought, are, within certain limits, peculiar to the individual. Hence arises the imperative necessity of care and labor in providing for a pure and elegant as well as a natural expression of thought by avoiding all low associations both of words and images.

The physical condition and habits of the speaker have much to do with his style. Speech is, materially, a physical effort; and must, conséquently, be vitally affected by the condition of the body. Especially do the more proper vocal organs, or those parts of the body which are more directly concerned in speaking, exert an influence on style. The culture of the voice in elocution is, therefore, important to the highest skill in constructing discourse for delivery. In preparing such discourse the writer will ever, even if un

consciously to himself, consult his powers of utterance. Observation abundantly shows how a naturally imaginative and highly impassioned style may be gradually changed into one that is dry and tame by the continued influence of the conviction of an inability appropriately to deliver strongly impassioned discourse. A conscious power and skill to express with effect the most highly wrought discourse will, on the other hand, ever be stimulating to the production of it. Indeed, the imagined effect of his writing as pronounced by himself will ever control the writer in preparing thought for communication to others. He will not write sentences that he cannot pronounce, on the one hand; and, on the other, he will be secretly prompted to write in such a manner as best to display his skill in delivery.

While naturalness requires that discourse be a free representation of the speaker's own mind and character, it forbids all ostentation of peculiarities. This fault of mannerism is always exceedingly offensive.

§304. The official character and standing of the speaker should ever so control style as that while it is not suffered to predominate in his attention at all over his subject or the design of his discourse, it yet shall prevent every thing incompatible with such official standing.

The regard which the speaker must pay to his official standing and relations must be a controlling one; and yet only in subordination to that which he is to pay to other things. Official propriety is only one, and a subordinate one, of those species of propriety which must appear in dis

course.

§ 305. The subject and the occasion of the discourse, as they must affect strongly the mind of the speaker, will also leave their impressions on his style, in render

ing it more earnest and elevated, more stately and dignified, or more light and familiar.

The distinction of the high, the low, and the middle styles of oratory recognized by the ancients was founded mainly on the subject and the occasion of the discourse. Other things, it is true, were regarded in the distinction, as personal peculiarities. Homer thus distributes the different styles among three of his leading characters.* Still, when the attempt was made by rhetoricians to determine the province of these separate styles, they generally fell back on the subject. Thus Cicero: "Is erit igitur eloquens, qui poterit parva summisse, modica temperate, magna graviter dicere." Orat. 29.

The following will serve to illustrate what different character the occasion or the subject will impress on style even when the same thought is to be conveyed. Homer thus describes the morning:—

"The saffron morn, with early blushes spread,

Now rose refulgent from Tithonus' bed,

With new-born day to gladden mortal sight,

And gild the course of heaven with sacred light."

Butler, in his " Hudibras," thus describes the same scene:

"The sun had long since in the lap

Of Thetis taken out his nap;

And, like a lobster boiled, the morn

From black to red began to turn."

Burke, in his speech on "Conciliation with America," was led to speak in the following terms of the rapid increase of population in the colonies :

"I can by no calculation justify myself in placing the number below two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and color; besides at least five hundred thousand others, who form no inconsiderable part of the whole. This, sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, when plain truth is of so much weight and importance.

* Ea ipsa genera dicendi jam antiquitus tradita ab Homero sunt tria in tribus; magnificum in Ulyxe et ubertum, subtile in Menelao et cohibitum, mixtum moderatumque in Nestore. Gell. VII., 14. See also Quint. Inst. Orat. II., 17,8; XII., 10, 63, 64. Cic. Orat. 23-29.