On Style

On Style 

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

 

Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character
than the face. To imitate another man's style is like wearing a mask, which,
be it never so fine, is not long in arousing disgust and abhorrence, because
it is lifeless; so that even the ugliest living face is better. Hence those who
write in Latin and copy the manner of ancient authors, may be said to speak
through a mask; the reader, it is true, hears what they say, but he cannot
observe their physiognomy too; he cannot see their style. With the Latin
works of writers who think for themselves, the case is different, and their
style is visible; writers, I mean, who have not condescended to any sort of
imitation, such as Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and
many others. An affectation in style is like making grimaces. Further, the
language in which a man writes is the physiognomy of the nation to which
he belongs; and here there are many hard and fast differences, beginning
from the language of the Greeks, down to that of the Caribbean islanders.
To form a provincial estimate of the value of a writer's productions, it is
not directly necessary to know the subject on which he has thought, or what
it is that he has said about it; that would imply a perusal of all his works. It
will be enough, in the main, to know how he has thought. This, which
means the essential temper or general quality of his mind, may be precisely
determined by his style. A man's style shows the formal nature of all his
thoughts—the formal nature which can never change, be the subject or the
character of his thoughts what it may: it is, as it were, the dough out of
which all the contents of his mind are kneaded. When Eulenspiegel was
asked how long it would take to walk to the next village, he gave the
seemingly incongruous answer: Walk. He wanted to find out by the man's
pace the distance he would cover in a given time. In the same way, when I
have read a few pages of an author, I know fairly well how far he can bring
me.

Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style, because in his
heart he knows the truth of what I am saying. He is thus forced, at the
outset, to give up any attempt at being frank or naïve—a privilege which is
thereby reserved for superior minds, conscious of their own worth, and
therefore sure of themselves. What I mean is that these everyday writers are
absolutely unable to resolve upon writing just as they think; because they
have a notion that, were they to do so, their work might possibly look very
childish and simple. For all that, it would not be without its value. If they
would only go honestly to work, and say, quite simply, the things they have
really thought, and just as they have thought them, these writers would be
readable and, within their own proper sphere, even instructive.

But instead of that, they try to make the reader believe that their
thoughts have gone much further and deeper than is really the case. They
say what they have to say in long sentences that wind about in a forced and
unnatural way; they coin new words and write prolix periods which go
round and round the thought and wrap it up in a sort of disguise. They
tremble between the two separate aims of communicating what they want to
say and of concealing it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look
learned or deep, in order to give people the impression that there is very
much more in it than for the moment meets the eye. They either jot down
their thoughts bit by bit, in short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences,
which apparently mean much more than they say,—of this kind of writing
Schelling's treatises on natural philosophy are a splendid instance; or else
they hold forth with a deluge of words and the most intolerable
diffusiveness, as though no end of fuss were necessary to make the reader
understand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas it is some quite
simple if not actually trivial idea,—examples of which may be found in
plenty in the popular works of Fichte, and the philosophical manuals of a
hundred other miserable dunces not worth mentioning; or, again, they try to
write in some particular style which they have been pleased to take up and
think very grand, a style, for example, par excellence profound and
scientific, where the reader is tormented to death by the narcotic effect of
longspun periods without a single idea in them,—such as are furnished in a
special measure by those most impudent of all mortals, the Hegelians; or it
may be that it is an intellectual style they have striven after, where it seems
as though their object were to go crazy altogether; and so on in many other
cases. All these endeavors to put off the nascetur ridiculus mus—to avoid
showing the funny little creature that is born after such mighty throes—
often make it difficult to know what it is that they really mean. And then,
too, they write down words, nay, even whole sentences, without attaching
any meaning to them themselves, but in the hope that someone else will get
sense out of them.

And what is at the bottom of all this? Nothing but the untiring effort to
sell words for thoughts; a mode of merchandise that is always trying to
make fresh openings for itself, and by means of odd expressions, turns of
phrase, and combinations of every sort, whether new or used in a new
sense, to produce the appearence of intellect in order to make up for the
very painfully felt lack of it.

It is amusing to see how writers with this object in view will attempt
first one mannerism and then another, as though they were putting on the
mask of intellect! This mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced for a
while, until it is seen to be a dead thing, with no life in it at all; it is then
laughed at and exchanged for another. Such an author will at one moment
write in a dithyrambic vein, as though he were tipsy; at another, nay, on the
very next page, he will be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and prolix,
stumbling on in the most cumbrous way and chopping up everything very
small; like the late Christian Wolf, only in a modern dress. Longest of all
lasts the mask of unintelligibility; but this is only in Germany, whither it
was introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and carried to its highest
pitch in Hegel—always with the best results.

And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand;
just as contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep things in
such a way that every one must necessarily grasp them. All the arts and
tricks I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if the author really
has any brains; for that allows him to show himself as he is, and confirms to
all time Horace's maxim that good sense is the source and origin of good
style:
Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons. 

But those authors I have named are like certain workers in metal, who
try a hundred different compounds to take the place of gold—the only metal
which can never have any substitute. Rather than do that, there is nothing
against which a writer should be more upon his guard than the manifest
endeavor to exhibit more intellect than he really has; because this makes the
reader suspect that he possesses very little; since it is always the case that if
a man affects anything, whatever it may be, it is just there that he is
deficient.

That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is naïve; it means that
he need not shrink from showing himself as he is. Generally speaking, to be
naïve is to be attractive; while lack of naturalness is everywhere repulsive.
As a matter of fact we find that every really great writer tries to express his
thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely and shortly as possible. Simplicity has
always been held to be a mark of truth; it is also a mark of genius. Style
receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but with sham-thinkers the
thoughts are supposed to be fine because of the style. Style is nothing but
the mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad style means a dull or
confused brain.

The first rule, then, for a good style is that the author should have
something to say; nay, this is in itself almost all that is necessary. Ah, how
much it means! The neglect of this rule is a fundamental trait in the
philosophical writing, and, in fact, in all the reflective literature, of my
country, more especially since Fichte. These writers all let it be seen that
they want to appear as though they had something to say; whereas they
have nothing to say. Writing of this kind was brought in by the pseudo
philosophers at the Universities, and now it is current everywhere, even
among the first literary notabilities of the age. It is the mother of that
strained and vague style, where there seem to be two or even more
meanings in the sentence; also of that prolix and cumbrous manner of
expression, called le stile empesé; again, of that mere waste of words which
consists in pouring them out like a flood; finally, of that trick of concealing
the direst poverty of thought under a farrago of never-ending chatter, which
clacks away like a windmill and quite stupefies one—stuff which a man
may read for hours together without getting hold of a single clearly
expressed and definite idea. However, people are easy-going, and they
have formed the habit of reading page upon page of all sorts of such
verbiage, without having any particular idea of what the author really
means. They fancy it is all as it should be, and fail to discover that he is
writing simply for writing's sake.

On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon wins his reader's
confidence that, when he writes, he has really and truly something to say;
and this gives the intelligent reader patience to follow him with attention.
Such an author, just because he really has something to say, will never fail
to express himself in the simplest and most straightforward manner;
because his object is to awake the very same thought in the reader that he
has in himself, and no other. So he will be able to affirm with Boileau that
his thoughts are everywhere open to the light of the day, and that his verse
always says something, whether it says it well or ill:

Ma pensée au grand jour partout s'offre et s'expose, 

Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose: 

while of the writers previously described it may be asserted, in the
words of the same poet, that they talk much and never say anything at all—
quiparlant beaucoup ne disent jamais rien.

Another characteristic of such writers is that they always avoid a
positive assertion wherever they can possibly do so, in order to leave a
loophole for escape in case of need. Hence they never fail to choose the
more abstract way of expressing themselves; whereas intelligent people use
the more concrete; because the latter brings things more within the range of
actual demonstration, which is the source of all evidence.

There are many examples proving this preference for abstract
expression; and a particularly ridiculous one is afforded by the use of the
verb to condition in the sense of to cause or to produce. People say to
condition something instead of to cause it, because being abstract and
indefinite it says less; it affirms that A cannot happen without B, instead of
that A is caused by B. A back door is always left open; and this suits people
whose secret knowledge of their own incapacity inspires them with a
perpetual terror of all positive assertion; while with other people it is merely
the effect of that tendency by which everything that is stupid in literature or
bad in life is immediately imitated—a fact proved in either case by the rapid
way in which it spreads. The Englishman uses his own judgment in what he
writes as well as in what he does; but there is no nation of which this eulogy
is less true than of the Germans. The consequence of this state of things is
that the word cause has of late almost disappeared from the language of
literature, and people talk only of condition. The fact is worth mentioning
because it is so characteristically ridiculous.

The very fact that these commonplace authors are never more than half
conscious when they write, would be enough to account for their dullness of
mind and the tedious things they produce. I say they are only half
conscious, because they really do not themselves understand the meaning of
the words they use: they take words ready-made and commit them to
memory. Hence when they write, it is not so much words as whole phrases
that they put together—phrases banales. This is the explanation of that
palpable lack of clearly-expressed thought in what they say. The fact is that
they do not possess the die to give this stamp to their writing; clear thought
of their own is just what they have not got. And what do we find in its
place?—a vague, enigmatical intermixture of words, current phrases,
hackneyed terms, and fashionable expressions. The result is that the foggy
stuff they write is like a page printed with very old type.

On the other hand, an intelligent author really speaks to us when he
writes, and that is why he is able to rouse our interest and commune with
us. It is the intelligent author alone who puts individual words together with
a full consciousness of their meaning, and chooses them with deliberate
design. Consequently, his discourse stands to that of the writer described
above, much as a picture that has been really painted, to one that has been
produced by the use of a stencil. In the one case, every word, every touch of
the brush, has a special purpose; in the other, all is done mechanically. The
same distinction may be observed in music. For just as Lichtenberg says
that Garrick's soul seemed to be in every muscle in his body, so it is the
omnipresence of intellect that always and everywhere characterizes the
work of genius.

I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works of these
writers; and in this connection it is to be observed, generally, that
tediousness is of two kinds; objective and subjective. A work is objectively
tedious when it contains the defect in question; that is to say, when its
author has no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate. For if a
man has any clear thought or knowledge in him, his aim will be to
communicate it, and he will direct his energies to this end; so that the ideas
he furnishes are everywhere clearly expressed. The result is that he is
neither diffuse, nor unmeaning, nor confused, and consequently not tedious.
In such a case, even though the author is at bottom in error, the error is at
any rate clearly worked out and well thought over, so that it is at least
formally correct; and thus some value always attaches to the work. But for
the same reason a work that is objectively tedious is at all times devoid of
any value whatever.

The other kind of tediousness is only relative: a reader may find a work
dull because he has no interest in the question treated of in it, and this
means that his intellect is restricted. The best work may, therefore, be
tedious subjectively, tedious, I mean, to this or that particular person; just
as, contrarity, the worst work may be subjectively engrossing to this or that
particular person who has an interest in the question treated of, or in the
writer of the book.

It would generally serve writers in good stead if they would see that,
whilst a man should, if possible, think like a great genius, he should talk the
same language as everyone else. Authors should use common words to say
uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We find them trying to
wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe their very ordinary
thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural,
and out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences perpetually stalk about on
stilts. They take so much pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high
flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their
prototype is Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told
to say what he had to say like a man of this world.

There is no expression in any other language exactly answering to the
French stile empesé; but the thing itself exists all the more often. When
associated with affectation, it is in literature what assumption of dignity,
grand airs and primeness are in society; and equally intolerable. Dullness of
mind is fond of donning this dress; just as an ordinary life it is stupid people
who like being demure and formal.

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man who dresses
himself up in order to avoid being confounded or put on the same level with
a mob—a risk never run by the gentleman, even in his worst clothes. The
plebeian may be known by a certain showiness of attire and a wish to have
everything spick and span; and in the same way, the commonplace person is
betrayed by his style.

Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to write exactly as
he speaks. There is no style of writing but should have a certain trace of
kinship with the epigraphic or monumental style, which is, indeed, the
ancestor of all styles. For an author to write as he speaks is just as
reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a
pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly
intelligible.

An obscure and vague manner of expression is always and everywhere a
very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it comes from
vagueness of thought; and this again almost always means that there is
something radically wrong and incongruous about the thought itself—in a
word, that it is incorrect. When a right thought springs up in the mind, it
strives after expression and is not long in reaching it; for clear thought
easily finds words to fit it. If a man is capable of thinking anything at all, he
is also always able to express it in clear, intelligible, and unambiguous
terms. Those writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and
equivocal sentences, most certainly do not know aright what it is that they
want to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still in the
stage of struggle to shape itself as thought. Often, indeed, their desire is to
conceal from themselves and others that they really have nothing at all to
say. They wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they
do not think, to say what they do not say. If a man has some real
communication to make, which will he choose—an indistinct or a clear way
of expressing himself? Even Quintilian remarks that things which are said
by a highly educated man are often easier to understand and much clearer;
and that the less educated a man is, the more obscurely he will write—
plerumque accidit ut faciliora sint ad intelligendum et lucidiora multo que a
doctissimo quoque dicuntur.... Erit ergo etiam obscurior quo quisque
deterior.

An author should avoid enigmatical phrases; he should know whether
he wants to say a thing or does not want to say it. It is this indecision of
style that makes so many writers insipid. The only case that offers an
exception to this rule arises when it is necessary to make a remark that is in
some way improper.

As exaggeration generally produces an effect the opposite of that aimed
at; so words, it is true, serve to make thought intelligible—but only up to a
certain point. If words are heaped up beyond it, the thought becomes more
and more obscure again. To find where the point lies is the problem of style,
and the business of the critical faculty; for a word too much always defeats
its purpose. This is what Voltaire means when he says that the adjective is
the enemy of the substantive. But, as we have seen, many people try to
conceal their poverty of thought under a flood of verbiage.

Accordingly let all redundancy be avoided, all stringing together of
remarks which have no meaning and are not worth perusal. A writer must
make a sparing use of the reader's time, patience and attention; so as to lead
him to believe that his author writes what is worth careful study, and will
reward the time spent upon it. It is always better to omit something good
than to add that which is not worth saying at all. This is the right application
of Hesiod's maxim, [Greek: pleon aemisu pantos]—the half is more than
the whole. Le secret pour être ennuyeux, c'est de tout dire. Therefore, if
possible, the quintessence only! mere leading thoughts! nothing that the
reader would think for himself. To use many words to communicate few
thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather
much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it makes is deep in
proportion as its expression has been simple. This is so, partly because it
then takes unobstructed possession of the hearer's whole soul, and leaves
him no by-thought to distract him; partly, also, because he feels that here he
is not being corrupted or cheated by the arts of rhetoric, but that all the
effect of what is said comes from the thing itself. For instance, what
declamation on the vanity of human existence could ever be more telling
than the words of Job? Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to
live and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he
fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
For the same reason Goethe's naïve poetry is incomparably greater than
Schiller's rhetoric. It is this, again, that makes many popular songs so
affecting. As in architecture an excess of decoration is to be avoided, so in
the art of literature a writer must guard against all rhetorical finery, all
useless amplification, and all superfluity of expression in general; in a
word, he must strive after chastity of style. Every word that can be spared is
hurtful if it remains. The law of simplicity and naïveté holds good of all fine
art; for it is quite possible to be at once simple and sublime.

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying only what is
worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail about things which everyone
can supply for himself. This involves correct discrimination between what it
necessary and what is superfluous. A writer should never be brief at the
expense of being clear, to say nothing of being grammatical. It shows
lamentable want of judgment to weaken the expression of a thought, or to
stunt the meaning of a period for the sake of using a few words less. But
this is the precise endeavor of that false brevity nowadays so much in
vogue, which proceeds by leaving out useful words and even by sacrificing
grammar and logic. It is not only that such writers spare a word by making
a single verb or adjective do duty for several different periods, so that the
reader, as it were, has to grope his way through them in the dark; they also
practice, in many other respects, an unseemingly economy of speech, in the
effort to effect what they foolishly take to be brevity of expression and
conciseness of style. By omitting something that might have thrown a light
over the whole sentence, they turn it into a conundrum, which the reader
tries to solve by going over it again and again.

[ Translator's Note.—In the original, Schopenhauer here enters upon a
lengthy examination of certain common errors in the writing and speaking
of German. His remarks are addressed to his own countrymen, and would
lose all point, even if they were intelligible, in an English translation. But
for those who practice their German by conversing or corresponding with
Germans, let me recommend what he there says as a useful corrective to a
slipshod style, such as can easily be contracted if it is assumed that the
natives of a country always know their own language perfectly.]

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, that gives brevity to
style, and makes it concise and pregnant. If a writer's ideas are important,
luminous, and generally worth communicating, they will necessarily furnish
matter and substance enough to fill out the periods which give them
expression, and make these in all their parts both grammatically and
verbally complete; and so much will this be the case that no one will ever
find them hollow, empty or feeble. The diction will everywhere be brief and
pregnant, and allow the thought to find intelligible and easy expression, and
even unfold and move about with grace.

Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of speech, let a
writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man has been thinned by illness and finds
his clothes too big, it is not by cutting them down, but by recovering his
usual bodily condition, that he ought to make them fit him again.
Let me here mention an error of style, very prevalent nowadays, and, in
the degraded state of literature and the neglect of ancient languages, always
on the increase; I mean subjectivity. A writer commits this error when he
thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and wants to say, and
takes no thought for the reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best
he can. This is as though the author were holding a monologue; whereas, it
ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express
himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the questions of his
interlocutor.

Style should for this very reason never be subjective, but objective; and
it will not be objective unless the words are so set down that they directly
force the reader to think precisely the same thing as the author thought
when he wrote them. Nor will this result be obtained unless the author has
always been careful to remember that thought so far follows the law of
gravity that it travels from head to paper much more easily than from paper
to head; so that he must assist the latter passage by every means in his
power. If he does this, a writer's words will have a purely objective effect,
like that of a finished picture in oils; whilst the subjective style is not much
more certain in its working than spots on the wall, which look like figures
only to one whose phantasy has been accidentally aroused by them; other
people see nothing but spots and blurs. The difference in question applies to
literary method as a whole; but it is often established also in particular
instances. For example, in a recently published work I found the following
sentence: I have not written in order to increase the number of existing
books. This means just the opposite of what the writer wanted to say, and is
nonsense as well.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he
does not attach much importance to his own thoughts. For it is only where a
man is convinced of the truth and importance of his thoughts, that he feels
the enthusiasm necessary for an untiring and assiduous effort to find the
clearest, finest, and strongest expression for them,—just as for sacred relics
or priceless works of art there are provided silvern or golden receptacles. It
was this feeling that led ancient authors, whose thoughts, expressed in their
own words, have lived thousands of years, and therefore bear the honored
title of classics, always to write with care. Plato, indeed, is said to have
written the introduction to his Republic seven times over in different ways.

[ Translator's Note.—It is a fact worth mentioning that the first twelve
words of the Republic are placed in the exact order which would be natural
in English.]

As neglect of dress betrays want of respect for the company a man
meets, so a hasty, careless, bad style shows an outrageous lack of regard for
the reader, who then rightly punishes it by refusing to read the book. It is
especially amusing to see reviewers criticising the works of others in their
own most careless style—the style of a hireling. It is as though a judge were
to come into court in dressing-gown and slippers! If I see a man badly and
dirtily dressed, I feel some hesitation, at first, in entering into conversation
with him: and when, on taking up a book, I am struck at once by the
negligence of its style, I put it away.

Good writing should be governed by the rule that a man can think only
one thing clearly at a time; and, therefore, that he should not be expected to
think two or even more things in one and the same moment. But this is what
is done when a writer breaks up his principal sentence into little pieces, for
the purpose of pushing into the gaps thus made two or three other thoughts
by way of parenthesis; thereby unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the
reader. And here it is again my own countrymen who are chiefly in fault.
That German lends itself to this way of writing, makes the thing possible,
but does not justify it. No prose reads more easily or pleasantly than French,
because, as a rule, it is free from the error in question. The Frenchman
strings his thoughts together, as far as he can, in the most logical and natural
order, and so lays them before his reader one after the other for convenient
deliberation, so that every one of them may receive undivided attention.
The German, on the other hand, weaves them together into a sentence
which he twists and crosses, and crosses and twists again; because he wants
to say six things all at once, instead of advancing them one by one. His aim
should be to attract and hold the reader's attention; but, above and beyond
neglect of this aim, he demands from the reader that he shall set the above
mentioned rule at defiance, and think three or four different thoughts at one
and the same time; or since that is impossible, that his thoughts shall
succeed each other as quickly as the vibrations of a cord. In this way an
author lays the foundation of his stile empesé, which is then carried to
perfection by the use of high-flown, pompous expressions to communicate
the simplest things, and other artifices of the same kind.

In those long sentences rich in involved parenthesis, like a box of boxes
one within another, and padded out like roast geese stuffed with apples, it is
really the memory that is chiefly taxed; while it is the understanding and the
judgment which should be called into play, instead of having their activity
thereby actually hindered and weakened. This kind of sentence furnishes
the reader with mere half-phrases, which he is then called upon to collect
carefully and store up in his memory, as though they were the pieces of a
torn letter, afterwards to be completed and made sense of by the other
halves to which they respectively belong. He is expected to go on reading
for a little without exercising any thought, nay, exerting only his memory, in
the hope that, when he comes to the end of the sentence, he may see its
meaning and so receive something to think about; and he is thus given a
great deal to learn by heart before obtaining anything to understand. This is
manifestly wrong and an abuse of the reader's patience.

[ Translator's Note.—This sentence in the original is obviously meant to
illustrate the fault of which it speaks. It does so by the use of a construction
very common in German, but happily unknown in English; where, however,
the fault itself exists none the less, though in different form.]

The ordinary writer has an unmistakable preference for this style,
because it causes the reader to spend time and trouble in understanding that
which he would have understood in a moment without it; and this makes it
look as though the writer had more depth and intelligence than the reader.
This is, indeed, one of those artifices referred to above, by means of which
mediocre authors unconsciously, and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal
their poverty of thought and give an appearance of the opposite. Their
ingenuity in this respect is really astounding.

It is manifestly against all sound reason to put one thought obliquely on
top of another, as though both together formed a wooden cross. But this is
what is done where a writer interrupts what he has begun to say, for the
purpose of inserting some quite alien matter; thus depositing with the reader
a meaningless half-sentence, and bidding him keep it until the completion
comes. It is much as though a man were to treat his guests by handing them
an empty plate, in the hope of something appearing upon it. And commas
used for a similar purpose belong to the same family as notes at the foot of
the page and parenthesis in the middle of the text; nay, all three differ only
in degree. If Demosthenes and Cicero occasionally inserted words by ways
of parenthesis, they would have done better to have refrained.

But this style of writing becomes the height of absurdity when the
parenthesis are not even fitted into the frame of the sentence, but wedged in
so as directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is an impertinent thing to
interrupt another person when he is speaking, it is no less impertinent to
interrupt oneself. But all bad, careless, and hasty authors, who scribble with
the bread actually before their eyes, use this style of writing six times on a
page, and rejoice in it. It consists in—it is advisable to give rule and
example together, wherever it is possible—breaking up one phrase in order
to glue in another. Nor is it merely out of laziness that they write thus. They
do it out of stupidity; they think there is a charming légèreté about it; that it
gives life to what they say. No doubt there are a few rare cases where such a
form of sentence may be pardonable.

Few write in the way in which an architect builds; who, before he sets to
work, sketches out his plan, and thinks it over down to its smallest details.
Nay, most people write only as though they were playing dominoes; and, as
in this game, the pieces are arranged half by design, half by chance, so it is
with the sequence and connection of their sentences. They only have an
idea of what the general shape of their work will be, and of the aim they set
before themselves. Many are ignorant even of this, and write as the coral
insects build; period joins to period, and the Lord only knows what the
author means.

Life now-a-days goes at a gallop; and the way in which this affects
literature is to make it extremely superficial and slovenly.