ENGLISH PROSE
By L. B. NAMIER WIMATICAL errors are the most primitive form of cruelty to language: they correspond to physical injuries and torture. on the grammatical side, English is lean and tough, and offers paratively little scope to tormentors. It is possibly the mixed a of the nation and language which has rubbed off grammatical s and made English less vulnerable : genders, inflections, ensions, &c., simplified to the most admirable extent, produce a rat Esperanto. But to satisfy the human need for self-mortifica- English spelling offers a wholesome, silent, substitute for matical frills. Not being of "pure race" English is compre- sive in its vocabulary. The language is like the nation: simple forms, illogical on paper, organic but not consciously organised, • rich in resources.
'ation and language are both prosaic from choice: there are guages which in verse flow as well as English, or better, but no em language that I know can compare with it in prose—and I SeSS (or suffer from) a fairly extensive, and even intimate, know- of languages. English prose is a perfect instrument : brief and tic, clear and precise, and yet offering the most ample oppor- ies for careful hedging. If you wish to be explicit, you can: you can also say things without saying them, and convey your aning safe from being pinned down to it. Again, the language II; the English mind: clear and simple and full of suppressions, right and yet evasive ; and it achieves the most complex results a seemingly plain, unostentatious manner. The English prose- le is an eminently social and collective achievement: its greatest mark, the " authorised " version of the Bible, was the work of committees (two sitting at Westminster, two at Cambridge, and at Oxford), revised by a general committee ; and its master- ftsmen during the next two hundred years were political writers: lion, Hobbes, Locke, Swift, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Burke. Mr. inston Churchill attains the highest level in speeches to the nation. Between thought and style there is a constant and necessary inter- n. Turgid thought cannot flow in crystal-clear language ; a venly mind is not capable of a careful selection of words, so as give to each word its full value and right connotations, and to idea its exact and fitting expression ; and to be truly discreet gh vocal, free though not silent, requires skill in the use of the Nage. In turn, constant, diligent care of language and style is a .tal discipline : at pays to undergo it. Bad writing is like bad iolting—it corrupts and wastes good material, and in the long run apt to affect the digestion. Cruelty to food can hardly be 2dicated in this country ; but cruelty to English can be prevented- ierefore vivat, floreat, S.P.C.E.! Style should be governed by purpose. Where the aim is to impart anal information, a strict economy of words is, as a rule, befitting: le narrative should be terse, flow briskly, be tidy and lucid in tangement, and yield, in its conciseness, a clear, comprehensive, kl unified view of the whole. A decorative style is out of place, id as irritating as architectural frills on ordinary buildings. It may necessary to enter into minute detail or to relate lengthy, weari- tne transactions : the reader will put up with it if taken quickly mss the dreary patches, but not if the author seems to relish the chin of his tale, or aggravates it by pleasant chatter and would-be cular grimaces. The pace of a narrative can be wonderfully feted by cutting out repetition and verbiage, even though the duction in length is comparatively small. Some fifteen years ago, 4ea traffic-blocks were becoming intolerable in London, I asked a conductor by how much a good run differed from an excru- 641Y slow journey on a stretch over which I frequently travelled find I was astonished to learn that even the worst crawl added
only about one third to the normal time. In the pace of a narrative or of a journey, as in human stature, the normal supplies a point beyond, or short of, which every unit becomes increasingly remarkable. Artificially balanced symmetry in the structure of a sentence is as tiresome and obsolete as the hard-worked antithesis of eighteenth- century writers ; and to leave a noun without an adjective is no longer nudism. The Greeks used certain small words to make their metres scan: but there is no occasion for ballast in English prose— accumulations of unimportant words are like fat disfiguring features.
Akin to them is the stammer of embarrassed beginnings and of - fumbling transitions. "Of all the far-reaching changes which the World War has precipitated in the political and social structure of European society, not the least in its importance is the wave of Agrarian Reform "—or of anything else about to be discussed. And here is a favourite conjunctive stammer: "It is hardly necessary to point out that . . ."—then why do so? Thus enriched Genesis would start: "Of all the extensive works of the Almighty, the first and most important were heaven and earth. In this connexion it is interesting to note that the earth was waste and void, and it may be added that darkness was . . ." There are even worse results of groping for an opening sentence than bumptious platitudes: a sudden launch and a mental bang are apt to detonate in ill- considered assertions. An undergraduate once read to me an essay on 1789, which began : "Of all European countries France alone has experienced a revolution. .. ." And Sir Nevile Henderson, late Ambassador to Berlin, thus opened para. 18 of his Final Report, of September, 1939: "People are apt, in my opinion, to exaggerate the malign influence of Herr von Ribbentrop, Dr. Goebbels, Herr Himmler and the rest." But so carefully had he examined the foundations of his " opinion " that, a month or two later, he wrote
in his Failure of a Mission (p. 251): "It is impossible to exaggerate
the malign influence of Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Himmler and com- pany."
Handle pronouns with care. "He told him" occurs in the Bible, but should be avoided. "I think Arthur would have had more respect for George if he had quarrelled with him, as he was clever enough . . ."—comprehensible but complicated. Discussing the Palestine Conferences of 1939 I wrote: " . . the prime movers in these transactions seemed to have tried to hide their true nature from themselves."* Whose nature? Their own or that of their transactions? The ambiguity would deserve blame were it not intentional.
Let not pronouns outrun the nouns to which they refer: "In his speech delivered at the opening of the Home for Lost Cats, which has been erected in this important provincial centre from the generous bequest of the lately deceased Miss Smith, Mr. Brown .." Start : "Mr. Brown, in his speech ..." and relieve the tension. In an argument or narrative each paragraph should deal with one subject only, and no subject should be dealt with in more than one paragraph. Such discipline leads to a proper articulation of the material, and tends to cut out meanderings and repetition. More- over, the arrangement should be such as to obviate sign-posts and announcements: "As was explained above," "as will be shown presently," "I propose to examine," "I shall not discuss," "I now pass to. . . ." Indeed, even in a jumble, such notifications rarely serve a useful purpose.
English prose, however clear and simple, has also to be elliptic ; at least the semblance of a free margin must be left for the thoughts of the reader. The Englishman says : "I like apples "; the meticu- lously precise German: "I like eating apples." The exhaustive (and exhausting) explanations and excessive emphasis characteristic of Continental languages and thought would be resented in English as irksome, and indeed as unbearable and discourteous. The reasons are cogently stated in Tristram Shandy (Book II, chapter XI): "Writing, when properly managed, . . . is but a different name for conversation. As no one who knows what he is about in good company would venture to talk all ; so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all. The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him some- thing to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself."
*/n the Margin of History, p. 85.
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