Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Condition and Prospects of Imaginative Literature at the Present Day
Thirdly his style excels in modulation. It is capable of extraordinary varieties of rhythm. To produce the sudden im pression the writer developes all the musical capacities of speech. He augments the effect of the words by the move ments of his sentences, making use of cadences or abrupt turns, carefully poising the accent of the syllable and the stress of the phrase, and so linking up associations of sound and tone with the ideas which form the meaning of the words.
To some degree these qualities are to be found in all good prose. All artistic writers shape their speech so that it may rouse by its form the desired association of ideas. But the distinction of modern prose lies in the degree to which this process is carried. The modern prose writer handles the medium of his art with the care of a poet. He is distinguished from his predecessors by his conscious, sometimes too conscious, use of words as symbols of a magic potency.
It is difficult to describe styles so as to bring out their exact differences, but it is easy to see how the methods of Stevenson differ, for example, from those of Scott. Compare our intro duction to Rob Roy with our introduction to Allan Breck Stewart. Scott, after two pages describing the hero's pre vious opinions of Scotchmen in general, proceeds thus 'it was then with an impression of dislike that I contem plated the first Scotchman I chanced to meet in society, There was much about him that coincided with my previous conceptions. He had the hard features and athletic form said to be peculiar to his country, together with the national intona tion and a slow pedantic mode of expression, arising from a desire to avoid peculiarities of idiom or dialect. And so on for a page more. - not a word of which, be it said, we would wish away.
This is how Allan is presented to us He was smallish in stature, but well set and as nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, and heavily freckled and pitted with the small-pox; his eyes were unusually light and had a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and alarming; and when he took off his great coat, he laid a pair of fine silver-mounted pistols on the table and I saw that he was belted with a great sword. His manners, besides, were elegant, and he pledged the captain handsomely. Altogether I thought of him at first sight that here was a man I would rather call my friend than my enemy.'
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