"Q " ON THE ART OF WRITING.• Wilms Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch was appointed King Edward VII. Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, he made careful inquiries whether Dr. Verrall, his predecessor, had left any " legacy of guidance " among his papers. But no such design could be found ; and he has therefore obeyed his own promptings in his interpretation of the Ordinance establishing the Professorship. We honour Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch for his loyalty to the brilliant and ingenious scholar, to whose gifts he pays fitting homage in his Inaugural Lecture, but we are well content that he has been free to go his own way. For `. Q's " way—if ho will allow us for brevity a sake to call him by the name under which he has endeared him- self to lovers of belles letfres for the last twenty years— has much to recommend it. He is careful to insist on his limitations; but few readers of these lectures are likely to lament his weakness in philology. It may be urged that they are sometimes lacking in the sedateness associated with the official utterances of a University Professor; but where they lose in dignity, they gain in freshness and stimulus. After all, lectures such as these are not intended for dons, but for under- graduates; and " Q's " defence of " judicious levity " is enough in itself to confound all " high-browed " critics. A Professor who is an idolater of Burke and Don Quixote and is sound on The Wrong Box is a safe guide for the ingenuous youth. He wages war on pedants and pedagogues and futile commentators, but he has no mercy on slovenly writers, dealers in circumlocu- tion, bombast, or obscurity. Above all, he is a believer in the
• On the Art of Writing: Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913-14. By Sir Arthur Qttiller-Couch, MA., Fellow of Jesus College, King Edward VU. Professor of English Literature. Cambridge : at the University Press. Rs. Gd. net.]
abiding vitality of English letters. He is concerned, not with the dissection of masterpieces as though they belonged to a dead language, but with pointing out their beauties as an incen- tive to further effort. (Here one may note his happy citation of a passage from the Lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who took a precisely similar view of the study of the old Masters.) The fruitful study of literature, in his view, involves the practice of the art of composition in verse as well as in prose. His lectures, as he truly puts it, are merely First Aids to Writing. He does not only say lege, lege, aliquid haerebit, but adds scribe, scribe, aliquid durable. Yet while thus modestly describing his own function, ho is by no means blind to the momentous consequences, if his advice were indiscriminately followed in an ago when the more volume of printed matter is a menace. " Q " encourages his young lions to write, but not necessarily for publication, and if they faithfully carry out his instructions and observe his caveats they ought, on entering the literary or journalistic arena, to be able to express themselves simply and clearly. Here " Q " speaks wisely from a wide experience. He too has been a disciple, has " played the sedulous ape," has written largely for newspapers without ever being infected by the " journalese " style, and prefers the monosyllabic to the polysyllabic manner of saying nothing. No journalist, immersed in the practice of his craft, can help reading without mingled dismay and gratitude his Interlude, in which, before coming to the consideration of honest prose, ho proceeds to clear sham prose or jargon out of the way, giving some terrible examples of the foggy wording, needless circumlocution, and sheer flux of words to the pen which dis- figure the columns of the best papers. The amazing musical criticism from the Standard quoted on p. 91 is a perfect example of that sad state of mind in which the writer, having nothing in particular to say, and being expected to say something, says it by mere effusion of inanity. " Q's " ridicule of the bugbear of repetition is excellent. " In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not only calls a spade a spade, but has the pluck to double spades and re-double. . . . The Gospel does not, like my young essayist, fear to repeat a word, if that word be good. The Gospel says ` Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's '—not ' Render unto Caesar the things that appertain to that potentate.' " To " Q's " collection of periphrases we beg to contribute another, also composed by a musical critic, who, wishing to avoid the repetition of the name Telramund in a notice of Lohengrin, labelled him beautifully as " the unfortunate Brabantian nobleman." But " Q," while he condemns these monstrosities, has a word to say on behalf of the expansive journalist. " At his worst he is an artist in his way : he daubs paint of this kind upon the lily with professional zeal ; the more flagrant (or, to use his own word, arresting) the pigment, the happier is his soul." The jargon that " Q " wars against with most energy is that which is practised by Parliamentarians and Government Departments, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, and commercial firms— which has its root in caution and indolence. It is sometimes- accurate and hits the mark, but more often than not " its method is to walk circumspectly round its target " ; and its two great vices are first the use of circumlocution in place of short straight speech, and second the habitual choice of "vague woolly abstract nouns rather than concrete ones." But " Q " is not content with telling us what to avoid. On the positive side his First Aida include a number of simple rules excellent alike in themselves and in the manner in which they are illus- trated and driven home.
We have not space to follow the Lecturer in his discussion of the capital difficulty of prose, and of the radical distinction between prose and verse, in his review of the lineage of English literature, his survey of English literature in our Universities, or his final disquisition on style. It is enough to say that, alike as mentor, eulogist, or critic, " Q " makes an invariably animated use of his wide reading, his enthusiasm for the sublime, and his contempt for the ridiculous. These lectures are full of interesting self-revelations, but void of the arrogance of egotism.
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