While the damp earth of April, the damp buds of April and the star less sky Listen with us. Up to us slowly, Up to us, here quivering and eager, Rung from a steeple, the prayer of the valley, The notes of America. Touch my arm, my throat, my breast, I see your eyes, Brothers American. Little hills that I carry in the pockets of my breast, My songs wherever I go; Great hills, pinched into peaks by the long, strong fingers of the past, Where my heart buckles down in humility, Where my heart strides up into pride. Hills, O hills, I stand on the river bank loving you: Eastern hills with a lone tree Where the first clean tinkle of the dawn came faintly, Yours the birth glory, the wonder of morning; Western hills, Where a line of black and white cows stood in a summer noon motionless, Gazing into the north and the far menace of afternoon thunder, Yours the death silence, the awful burden of perpetual sunsets. Life and death intermingled, Life and death everlasting! Night comes with hands of dark pansies Over hills high and low, And grandeur stalks on the ridges. New England, New England, hills of New England, Out of you and of you The hills of New York, Pennsylvania; Out of you the sharp, straight terror of the Rockies, The great canyon and its impetuous prisoner, irresistible to the Rio; Out of you and of you all these And the singing inhabitants. Rock wedge, hickory wedge of a nation, New England, New England, Arrow head of America, cradle of greatness, VOL COX-No. 824 7 F. R. MCCREARY. PROSE STYLE BY W. C. BROWNELL I THE ART OF PROSE WITH the forces at command of which I have spoken1-with attentive regard for order and movement and, under their influence, utilization of the abounding, if a little bit monotonous manner and personality today vouchsafed to us-is it quixotism to cherish among other æsthetic visions the ideal of a richer prose than that which is today our ideal, the ideal in a word of æsthetic rather than of purely communicative prose? Logically the thread I have been following would lead to such an ideal—one that should fuse style and manner, on terms implying both the disciplinary and the inspiring influence upon manner of the spirit of order and movement, and the endowment in turn of this spirit, which is of universal application, with the particular and personal character that in a talent of any value inevitably stamps and colors the concrete result. Only by this welding of what he can't keep out, with what consciously, even if, in fortunate cases easily he puts in, is the artist likely to achieve in anything like completeness the artistic potentialities of whatever problem he is attacking, of whatever conception he is endeavoring to realize, or of whatever subject he wishes to present, to develop, to communicate. Naturally, what consciously he puts in is what costs him his effort and monopolizes his mind. Hic labor, hoc opus, est. Hence possibly the decline of style in a labor-saving age. Hence the rarity of that "power and skill with which the evolution of his poems is conducted" ascribed by Arnold to Gray, and of the pleasure we get when at any point we feel what Mr. Sherman has 1 See THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, June, 1924 called "the formative pressure of the tone and structure of the entire work." This last remark, indeed, may be deemed quite the formula for the view here taken-the "tone" being, let us say, altogether native and, if one chooses, originally instinctive, but consciously utilized together with the conscious "structure" as "formative pressure" throughout the work as a whole, and in that way inducing the sense and illustrating the spirit of style. At any rate the conscious field is the only one that can be cultivated, and, though laborious, its cultivation has hitherto been found profitable by civilization. nesses. There is, however, another strain in the temper of the age hostile to this spirit of style besides that egotism and its derivative laziness which Spinoza deplored, I believe, above other human weakThese latter traits are general and are vaunted rather than dissembled by those who illustrate them, to whom they wear the aspect of self-respect and inspiration. It is hardly unparliamentary therefore, to refer to them as general, if we bear in mind that the current egotism or self-respect does not exclude respect for others who may be like-minded-nor the prevailing inspirational indolence conflict with the dominant industrial note that hums so steadily in various sections of the contemporary æsthetic field. But these are practical forces, in full and largely automatic activity, and at least so far as literary expression in English prose is concerned style has of late years suffered, I think, quite as sensibly from a definite theory that it is constituted by certain elements that in reality only condition it. Prose of course is vastly our most general as well as most copious medium of articulate expression and in spite of the flood of verse, bond and free, is what for the most part is understood in current discussion of the subject of style; it would be exact, I imagine, to say that though style is considered when poetry is discussed, when style is discussed prose is intended. The elements I refer to are simplicity and clarity-or, shaded a trifle, directness and precision. How much better, how extraordinarily much better it would be to concentrate these admirable qualities in the domain of thought rather than upon expression. The gain from such a transfer appears-in theory anyhow-the more you reflect upon it the more worth while. Then if your purely clear and simple style did not take care of itself, automatically following significance clear and simple, you could arrange for its doing so in the collegiate rather than in the post-graduate curriculum. The latter might preferably preoccupy itself with the aesthetic values of the subject. In so doing it could hardly fail to realize the limitations of our prose ideal of simplicity and clarity and the advantage of enduing these qualities, even in instances where their heightening by emotional color is not called for, with the order and movement of style. That simplicity and clarity once attained will of themselves disclose this order and movement is a superstition, born perhaps of the difficulty of attaining them-a difficulty great enough no doubt to have its surmounting thus crowned if such things were arranged on the reward of merit principle. They are, however, arranged differently, and further effort is necessary even after thought is clarified before its expression becomes style, though I am proceeding on the presumption that we might not too tragically tax our indolence if we elevated our prose ideal enough to stimulate this broader and more exacting practice. No doubt we should have to try in order to find out about that. I think the experiment in any case would be an interesting one, and even if any elevation of our present ideal proved to involve considerably increased mental activity, that result might easily be worth what it might cost. Certainly when the heightening of emotional color is called for, when we feel stirred and wish to communicate the feeling, we might find that we succeeded better, even if we had to take greater pains, by confining ourselves less rigidly merely to stating the fact-if, in a word, we invoked the genius of order and movement, instead of the spirit of statistics. And undoubtedly we should find succeeding better agreeable. Attic prose is assuredly admirable and Asiatic often meretricious, but it is quite possible to avoid the latter without attaining the former. The injunction "Cease to do evil" demands its sequel, "learn to do good." Otherwise lethargy ensues. Andat least so far as classification is concerned!-why should not our prose be some third kind, neither Asiatic nor yet Attic, but an eclectic with the virtues of both and the faults or failures of neither; or rather a development of our own needs and nature, guided by what these have to suggest to us. In the field of the imagina tion we have amassed so much treasure of remembered experience, notably emotional, which the antique world did not possess, as to make exclusively rational concentration seem of necessity limited as an ideal, however much-however grossly in fact-we may need it as an element in both thought and style. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech suits us better than Pericles's funeral oration, so much has happened between their respective eras-Christianity for one thing, romanticism for another. And there is nothing in realism really to warrant an arid style. To be driven by Burke's excesses to exaltation of Addison's sedateness betrays too clearly the didactic strain in Arnold's criticism. Not that there can be any objection made, especially in criticism, to desiring "that the good may prevail", which phrase from the Agamemnon he cites as the inspiration of all the higher literature since, as indeed it must still be unless one views the human scene with the dreamy eye of the ruminants of the field. If this animal attitude towards the function of literature were not so popular just now it would seem extraordinary-instead of wearisome that holding it should be congruous with the possession of an emotional organization sufficiently sensitive to expand and contract in sympathy with the subject it studies, the thesis it expounds. But one need not be a thorough believer in the current doctrine of "Hands off! Let 'em have a good time," or a devotee of the art for art gospel, and may even take a human interest in human welfare, and still hold that literature and art are not really to be evaluated with sole reference to their exemplary reproduction in an indefinite future. So regarding them the eye of criticism is on the wrong object. For criticism the parent has a prior claim over the progeny. The latter might perhaps advantageously be left to the consideration of instructors of youth who no doubt best know how to serve their interests and secure their well-being. To instil is to criticism more pertinent than to instruct and, though more difficult, is also more decorous. Arnold's preoccupation with education had every warrant, and its overflow into his criticism in the main the happiest result, but in this field it led him to develop a fondness for categories to which our indebtedness is great but which was not always quite consonant with his own critical genius. This fondness, joined |