MANNERISM. IN the foregoing chapters I have pointed out some of the defects that seem worthy of notice in our prose writings. It will be seen that, far from improving the art of composition, in proportion to our learning and enlightenment, we have in many respects degraded it from its proper dignity and importance. And not only is the language, as written and spoken, a different language from what it should be: each trade, each profession, each association, each quackery, has a language and style of composition peculiar to itself. There is the mob-orator style invented by O'Connell; the knock-down style by Robins; the washy style by Rowland; the unctuous style by Holloway; the glossy style by Day and Martin; and the patchwork style by Moses and Son. There is, moreover, the naval style, the military style, the theatrical style, the Cockney style, the snob style, and the penny-a-line style. The intelligent reader is sufficiently acquainted with the Protean forms in which our excellent mother-tongue delights to disguise herself, and it is unnecessary to quote examples. But perhaps the most characteristic style of all is the tally-ho, or Nimrodian style. This method of composition consists in starting some fresh idea at the beginning of every paragraph; in losing sight of it as soon as it is started; and in pursuing in its stead the first stray conceit that turns up. During the chase the reader gets occasional glimpses of the particular notion with which the writer set out. He sometimes even fancies that he is once more on its track, and on the point of coming up with it. But he soon discovers his error; for now it appears that the writer had mistaken one idea for another, and had lost sight of the old in his pursuit of the At times the reader is hurried on in a straight line. At others he is dragged through apparently interminable windings, and finds himself, at the winding up, on the exact spot whence he had taken his departure. The great beauty of this style consists in jumbling in one sentence every form and figure of speech. The longer the sentence, the more rugged its construction, the more intricate its involutions, the more gaps it presents in the way of dashes, the more barriers it opposes in the way parentheses, the more fences it shows in compound epithets; the more pleasurable will be the reader's excitement, and the new. |