But when his audience has enough

Of the Simon-pure heroic,

They cry aloud for the slapstick stuff
And he lets 'em have it good and rough,
This humor protozoic.

Odysseus tans Thersites' hide

And cracks his woolly pate

Each hero has to hold his side

And the shekels pour in a golden tide

For the poet up-to-date.

COLIE AMBICUS.

DE GREGE SCRIPTORUM

The familiar distinction between the form of expression and the ideas expressed, although justified by convenience, is not logically accurate. Language is the instrument of thought as well as a medium of expression. Obscurity, affectation, or vulgarity of style are faithful reflections of the writer's own mind, nor can he long sustain a tone dissonant with his inward qualities. The consciousness of possessing an idea without finding words to express it is merely a flattering illusion; until the words are found we must believe that our conception was not clear. There are, it is true, many feelings, visions, intimations, which defy our vocabulary, but they defy intellect, too, and to be known they must be actually experienced. The artist or the philosopher can give us only shadows of them in metaphor, because when he reflects about them he sees only their shadows himself. Expression is the criterion of thought: form and concept are but different phases of one and the same thing.

It is equally hard to define the difference between clarity and beauty; first, because clarity of diction is in itself a kind of beauty; and secondly, because it is so difficult to appreciate ideas conveyed in crabbéd style. Even when the words themselves are perfectly comprehensible our minds will not assimilate their meaning if the composition is lifeless. The writer who is eager to move, to convince, to persuade, must give his ideas legs. to walk on-or rather wings to fly. He must cultivate every form of beauty of which language is susceptible: the sensuous

qualities of sonority and rhythm, the imaginative or poetic qualities achieved by the artistic use of metaphor, and the spiritual qualities such as sublimity and sincerity, which are the marks that distinguish the highest forms of art from mere virtuosity. So while one may write very beautifully indeed and none the less be thoroughly mistaken, no one may properly be called truthful who cannot find adequate expression for his thought. To be truthful we must be effectual.

In the little world as it was before the French Revolution, these principles were tacitly accepted; partly because they are implicit in the models of classical antiquity. Nowadays they are almost forgotten. Our modern world is too big to think in: there are too many people in it, too many objects and too much to do a colossal antheap, all scurry and bewilderment. So we have no time to read anything carefully and intelligently, as Dante read the Aeneid, or to write anything as clear and perfect as the Divina Commedia. Our time is so completely taken up with trivialities that we regretfully forego essentials. It is a vicious circle, a disease, whose effects continually reappear as causes. Neglect of form encourages the rank and jungly growth of facile compositions which are not worth careful study and are therefore merely scanned. This habit once taken, the reader loses his ability to distinguish and appreciate perfection. So at length works of the greatest excellence are rendered fruitless, not through any fault of their own but because the weeds give them no inch of ground to grow in.

Now, since the literary ideals of most people, unless they happen to be geniuses, are wholly drawn from their reading, and since they read very hastily and indiscriminately, there has appeared a legion of industrious writers who are sincerely ignorant of the difference between good and bad writing. Their works are invariably far too long; what might have been a good footnote is puffed up into an article; if they stumble upon a reasonably substantial idea they cannot analyze it and concludethey must dilute it with historical introductions and polemics until a modest chapter has been turned into a book, planless, diffuse, and intolerably dull. The usage is so universal and so stereotyped that it rarely occurs to us to complain. Often, too, the fixed literary forms employed are oddly inappropriate to the subject treated. It is fitting that a novelist should arrange

his narrative in a symmetrical pattern, since he is supposed to be thoroughly familiar with the events; but it is absurd for a philosopher to impose such formal regularity upon his fragmentary visions. The attempt leads to desperately contrived transitions between disparate ideas, tottering word-bridges across lacunae, specious developments of a tenuous thought. Confucius, Plato, and Pascal are better models for philosophic prose than Saint Augustine or John Locke. But the most radical defect of modern writings is vulgarity. They are not merely lustreless, they are positively and aggressively commonplace. Sometimes this effect is achieved by means of false beauties and leaden platitudes, sometimes by the excessive use of Latin words and learned periphrasis, sometimes, by way of avoiding these notorious faults, the author tries to write exactly as he talks, with unaffected tediousness.

But we live in a virulently democratic country whose ideals are perpetually in contact with economic production and salesmanship. Our authors live by pleasing the public; our professors are advanced pro pondere scripti. Vulgarity and prolixity are quite inevitable!

That explains a great deal, but it justifies nothing. The general trend of a civilization is perhaps inevitable, but the necessity is not specific: The individual is not foredoomed in the cradle to write silly novels or stupid articles. He may understand the forces that bear upon him and by understanding annul them, or accept the laudable alternative of silence. Above all, he may learn to be honest, and not lay upon the altar of the Muses the gifts intended for Mammon.

There is therefore no excuse for these drab imitations that pass for books. If we were a truly practical people we should neither write them nor countenance them. If we do so it is not because we are enslaved by the civilization in which we liveto what end do we gather and interpret the records of past thought if not to protect ourselves against the tyranny of the present?—it is because we lack patience and ardor and boldness of mind.

F. A.